
Class ^PSl^XS- 
Book_I[klii_ 
Copight^j" 19 Q s 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE 



FORESHADOWED WAY 



BY 



Mrs. HELEN ALDRICH De KROYFT 

Author of "A Place in Thy Memory,** *' Th* Story of Little 
Jakey," ** Mortar a," etc, etc. 



J J 3 }' 33 



F. TENNYSON NEELY CO. 

NEW YORK LONOOIf 



THE LIBRARY OF 

CONGRESS, 
Twc CoHita Received 

OCT. 8 1901 

COPVRItaHT ENTRY 
O-t. A ^ - '' ^7 ^ ' 

CLASS (Tt-XXo. No. 

COPY a. 



-J 



K >" 



<? f ^ 



Copyright, 190 1, 

by 

Mrs. HELEN ALDRICH Db KROYFT, 

in the 

United States 

and 
Great Britain. 



All Rights Rewrved. 



TO THE MEMORY 

of 

MRS. COMMODORE SHUBRICK, 

Washington, D. C, 

This volume is most affectionately inscribed, 

well knowing that so it go out into the world 

mantled tn the fault-covering garb of 

the smile she wore, all criticism 

mil be powerless to harm* 



PREFACE. 



The story of a book must have been poorly told in- 
deed, when a preface can add much to its interest ; but 
along the pages of this volume there are so many refer- 
ences to a phenomenal experience that it seems only 
fitting to preface the book with an account of the phe- 
nomenon itself. 

On a hill in the town of Lima, a little south of 
Kochester, stands a Seminary; and in the summer of 
1843, toward the close of my last term there, at the 
hour of eleven, between the stroke of the bell that 
called me to class and the entrance of my roommate 
from hers, three or five seconds, the present, so to speak, 
dropped out, and with every sense barred to the outer 
world the soul in me was caught away into the future 
and made to look on myself — first, robed in white ; then 
in deepest black, with a group of others also in black 
standing with bowed heads, the sun blazing down upon 
them, and water rolling up almost to their feet. Then, 
as by a turn of thought, I became that other self in 
black and stood overwhelmed with the world around 
me as black as night; then came the consciousness of 
going, or rather of being borne or wafted along through 
the darkness; then a pause, as it seemed, when lo! 
out in the distance the darkness began to take on a 
shape and rise up before me — a shape of its own, as 
apart from the darkness that enveloped me — an all- 
seeing, thousand-eyed shape that filled me with an in- 
describable fear; yet as by the double attraction of my 



yi PREFACE, 

will to go and the shape to draw, I steadily approached 
the forbidding presence only to find its surface pressed 
full of tiny circlets of gold, whose creased edges were 
barely more than visible. Still, timid and fearful, I 
began to pick them out with my right hand and drop 
them into my left, and when my left hand was nearly 
full, with the thought : "Why ! this is money," came the 
recollection of the one thing in the world that I had 
most desired to have done; when, as I went to drop 
another into my hand, I discovered that what I thought 
of had borne the others away. Then on, on through 
what seemed weary ages of going, going, I saw myself 
gathering those tiny circles, picking them out with 
one hand and dropping them into the other, only to 
see them spirited away by that one absorbing thought, 
until suddenly all the gold disappeared on the side 
of the gloomy old presence toward me — not a shining 
speck was there; but while I looked and wondered, 
quantities of a dark green material rose up in its stead, 
not at all filling the space the gold had left, but stacked 
up in it, lying all loose in lumps, rolls or bunches, 
and seemingly worthless. But taking them in my hands 
I saw that possession made all their edges flash golden ; 
and despite the roughness of the way that followed and 
the sounds of alarm filling the air, on, on I wandered, 
everywhere intent upon gathering the dark green stuff, 
but never retaining it, it seeming merely to pass through 
my hands, the same as the gold had done ; until at last, 
when weariness had weighed down every thought, and 
endless had long since echoed in every tread, all at 
once the dark green stuff also disappeared and the 
same vacuum as before lay spread out before me, the 
ground only or the base whence had sprung the dark 
green stuff remaining green. Then farther in toward 



PREFACE. Yii 

tHe heart of the gloomy old presence I saw countless 
golden squares or thin sheets standing on their edges, 
and so tightly wedged together that one would think 
it impossible ever to move them. The surface, too, oi 
the edges seemed covered over with something that 
needed to be brushed away, which, while I looked, dis- 
appeared. Then up at the right-hand end of the long 
line of shining squares, some grew loose and one after 
another came out to me, myself seeming to draw or 
take them as by a kind of right. I stacked them in my 
arm, under my arm, then in the other arm; then I 
walked away with something like the pride of possession 
warming in my thoughts, saying to myself : 

"Why ! this is wealth — I can go now and have what- 
ever I wish," the gloomy old pillar-like presence that 
had so long overawed me with its gloom, no longer 
keeping pace. The way was more open, I moved faster 
and in a new direction, crossed water, and then on, 
until all unconscious how I had reached it I turned to 
look back and saw that I was standing upon a very 
great height. 

"Why," I said, "what a long, climbing way I have 
been coming." Then turning as if to go on, such a sea 
of distance spread out before me as the mind in its 
natural state can never grasp, when suddenly in the 
great dome of night that bent above and around me, 
there came just above the horizon a far-off little break 
through which rushed, as I first thought, foaming 
waters; but as it came rolling toward me growing 
larger and larger, and I saw the clouds fleeing and the 
darkness melting away, as it broke over me I shouted : 

"0, the light, the light!" through whose dazzling 
beams one form only met my gaze, and then in a 
twinkling all was the same to me as before. 



Viii PREFACE, 

My roommate, who was at the threshold when I 
started to rise, had only reached the table to lay down 
her books; and turning to her with all this weight of 
years upon my soul, I said: 

"Where have you been?" 

"Why! I've been to class — where do you think Tve 
been?" 

"But where have you been since?" 

"Why, IVe been coming. What do you mean — why 
don't you go to your class — don't you hear the bell?'^ 

Surely, the bell that had dismissed her class and 
called mine was ringing in the air yet. I tripped 
down the stairs and entered the recitation room just 
as Professor Whitlocke was taking the chalk from the 
table to draw a figure upon the board; and as I looked 
at him and the faces around him it seemed really a 
thousand years since I saw them last. 

Only a second gone, and yet in that flash of time 
I had waded through the shadow of all that was des- 
tined to be lengthened over the years of my life — 
and hence the title: 

"The Foreshadowed Way/ 



THE FORESHADOWED WAY. 



CHAPTER I. 

SIX SCENES. 

New York, September, 18Jf9. 
If mere politeness require that we sometimes write 
to those who have been kind to us, how constantly and 
forever should I be launching remembrances to thee, 
my good Samaritana, who came to love and bless when 
even the stars had deserted and all the world had passed 

away. 

A truce, though, to the past, when every thought in 
my soul is burdened with the present, as I know yours 
will be when I tell you that right here this day the 

sixth scene foreshadowed in that vision at L has 

as literally transpired as is possible for a real thing 
to follow its shadow. You remember how it began: 
the bell struck and I was starting for class when the 
present dropped out, and the future, or what was to 
be my future, opened to my view. 

Scarcely twice twelve moons had rounded upon the 
world after that fateful vision, when lo ! behold me 
standing in a summer parlor with the carpet, even, 
covered with white, my betrothed pillowed amid snowy 
draperies, and myself in snow white, holding out my 
hand to him in marriage, not knowing whether his 
fall from the carriage was to leave him yet many days, 
one day, or one hour even. It was the appointed time 
for our wedding, that in four little hours more death 
would have prevented. 

Then mark! two days, and away out there by the 



12 TEE F0RE8EAD0WED WAT, 

lake in a blazing July sun with the waves washing up 
almost to the feet of the dead, myself in deep black 
with a group of some twenty others standing with 
bowed heads around his grave — and tell me, was ever 
anything more literal than that for the first two scenes ? 
And yet so overwhelmed was I by the reality that I did 
not see it. No, and when, not quite a month later, the 
third scene, the darkness, stole upon my life and I 
awoke but to find the world changed to night, it was 
so many times more overwhelming that I failed to 
recognize that also until some days after, a lady in the 
house to whom I had repeated the vision, came to my 
room and whispered: 

"Don't you see — the darkness of your vision has come 
to pass ?" 

Then I could not only see in the darkness the third 
scene, but recognized the first two also, and wondered 
how I could have passed through those three succes- 
sive scenes of white, black, and darkness, without rec- 
ognizing them. When the next or fourth scene, though, 
the being borne or carried along throiigh the darkness, 
came to me in my journey from Rochester to this Blind 
Institute, first by cars and then by steamer, the sensa- 
tion was not so new or strange, nor so overwhelming 
either but that, rocking down the river in my berth 
at night I recognized it and said to myself: 

"Ah! this is that long dark way of being borne or 
carried along, just as it was in the vision." 

But now after three years of imprisonment within 
these gloomy walls, hearken while I tell you of the 
fifth scene, the scene wherein I myself was drawn 
nearer and nearer to the dark old presence rising up 
before me and filling me with such an indescribable 
fear. You will be astonished when I tell you that every 



SIX SCEVES. 13 

shudder of that fear I have lived through right here 
in New York just as literally as with this pencil and 
creased lines I am describing it to you. Letting music 
go, I seized upon the idea of making a volume of my 
own letters; but no publisher could be found willing 
to undertake my work without being secured for at least 
half of the first edition, which drove me to the necessity 
of seeking subscribers enough to bring the little book 
out, stereotyped and paid in advance — far too great 
an enterprise, you may believe, for one to embark in 
alone here in New York, without some days, and not 
a few nights, of very serious reflection, as the walks 
about these grounds and the walls of the old parlor 
yonder would bear me witness. 

Ah ! when the world is still and all are sleeping, how 
easy it is to be courageous, majestic even and grand, 
treading bravely on. When the world has awakened, 
though, and all her enginery of life is astir, then 
cowards flee while only heroes abide to take part in the 
great strife of life; and I came at last to pray the 
Lord to make me as courageous amid the noise and stir 
of the day as I was in the stillness of the night. At 
last, one bright May morning, I awoke with all fear 
of the world departed; not a touch of cowardice re- 
mained in my soul, and straightway seizing my card of 
slanted ridges, I wrote for myself the briefest prospectus 
possible, then dressed and hurried down to the super- 
intendent's office to seek his opinion when he should 
come out from breakfast. 

"Will you read this, Mr. Chamberlain," I said, "and 
tell me exactly what you think of it?" 

"Certainly,'' he replied. And with the paper hardly 
more than in his hand, taking it all in, seemingly, at 
a glance, he exclaimed; 



14 THE FORESHADOWED WAT. 

"Perfect, just perfect! and let me tell you no man 
with half a heart in him will ever read this without 
subscribing for your book. The trouble, though, will 
be to get him to read it." 

"Oh! then the battle is half fought," I said, laugh- 
ing; "for since I have persuaded Mr. Chamberlain so 
easily to run his eyes down over its crooked lines, I 
am sure when printed on the inside cover to a set of 
lovely little blanks, ruled for name, place, and money 
paid, no one will refuse to read it." 

"But you haven't it printed yet," he said. 

"No," I answered, "and with your permission, that 
is what I am going to ask you to get done for me, and 
have the kindness to trust me for it until the first 
dozen subscribers have written their names and marked 
them all '$1.00 paid' — for as the prospectus specifies, 
you see they are to pay in advance, and trust me to 
bring them the book before Christmas." 

Then folding the paper and putting it into his pocket, 
laughing the while at — I hardly knew what — ^he said, 
repeating and emphasizing my directions: 

"Yes, you shall have the twelve copies exactly as 
you wish, twelve copies printed, lined and figured, and 
to be delivered precisely at one o'clock Wednesday 
next," asking teasingly: "Would one over make any 
particular difference, or a half hour more or less in any 
way affect the enterprise?" 

"Yes," I said, "Mr. Chamberlain, the weal of the 
whole thing may just hang upon a half hour of that 
day." 

You see, Eliza, the Board of Managers of the Insti- 
tute, comprising some twenty or thirty of the best 
citizens of New York, was to meet that afternoon, and 
I had planned to wait upon them to head the list with 



SIX SCENES. 15 

all their honored names written down together. The 
angels do help sometimes, surely, and the little pros- 
pectuses came exactly at the appointed time, beautifully 
done and bound in bright covers. Taking one of them 
in my hand, I said: 

"Now, Mr. Chamberlain, my little enterprise wants 
just one more hallowing from you.'^ 

"What is that?'' he asked. 

"Why," I said chokingly, "the directors, you know, 
meet this afternoon ; they are all up there now in their 
room, and I want you to go up with me and introduce 
me to them, reminding them in the few words you will 
have to say, that I came here commended to their 
kindness by Senator Backus, of Rochester, leaving me 
then to plead my own case with the venerable body as 
best I may." 

"I will do it," was his quick response ; and giving me 
his arm, we climbed the long, winding stairs — and I 
only wish you could have heard his graceful announce- 
ment of me there. Suffice it to say, though, his every 
word was like a prelude to the petition I had come to 
present. Indeed, I had scarcely more than named it, 
as it seemed, when the president arose, took the little 
prospectus from my hand, and passed it over to the 
secretary to read; which done, the president said: 

"Excuse us, please, madam, and we will act upon this 
in your absence." 

When moments enough had elapsed for the soul in 
me to live out a thousand years of its own, the secre- 
tary, covered over with smiles, as though he and his 
compeers had been doing the loveliest thing in the 
world, came out to me, bearing in his hand not only 
the little prospectus with all their names written down^ 
each marked, "$1.00 paid," but a roll of bills also, 



16 THE P0RW8SAD0WED WAY, 

twenty-four in number. It was the good director, who 
since Mr. Dean's resignation has been my best friend 
here, but all I could say to him was: 

"Oh! Mr. Wood, how surely the greater one is, the 
more indulgent always to little things." 

But let me tell you, Eliza, what it cost me to go up 
there and wait upon that formidable body of directors 
and ask them to head my little enterprise for me, you 
can possibly imagine; but when with a young girl 
escort I came to literally approach the dark, old, thou- 
sand-eyed world everywhere bending above and around 
me, only One in heaven can possibly paint what the 
endurance of it was to my soul. Suffocating with fear 
and dread, often, often I have paused with my hand 
on the knob to a door, praying for courage to go in. 
Strange to say, though, many, many days had passed 
before it flashed upon my thoughts: "Why! this is 
what the being drawn into closer and closer contact 
with the dark, old, overawing presence meant in the 
vision.'* 

So now, having fully reached the fifth scene, you are 
wondering when and how followed the next — that of 
the golden specks or tiny circles. But wait ! After an 
absence of some weeks in the country, driven thither by 
the alarm of cholera, I returned ; and beginning exactly 
where I left off, the very first one I waited upon paid 
me in the tiniest little speck of a gold dollar possible to 
imagine. Do you see? — during my absence from the 
city the Government coined millions of tiny gold dol- 
lars and scattered them over the land. "And what, then, 
is getting subscribers here now, but literally picking 
the shining little species from the time-worn surface of 
the dark old overawing presence around me? 

Strange to say, though, I did not see in those shin- 



SIX SCENES. 17 

ing little specks of gold dollars that I had really entered 
upon the sixth scene of the vision, so stealthily this, 
like the five scenes preceding it, has been translated 
into stern reality; and I might not have thought of it 
even now but for a little touch of circumstance that, 
like a magic key, to-day unlocked it all plain to my 
view: The papers have commenced announcing my 
forthcoming little book, with quotations from the let- 
ters already published; and coming this morning to a 
large insurance or banking house where a dear old 
Quaker gentleman is the president, I had to stand and 
wait for him a little, as the clerk said he was engaged 
with a meeting of the board. When he finally came — 

"Ah!'^ he said, "I have seen a notice of thy little 
book that is to be, and I shall be very happy to sub- 
scribe for a copy." He turned away to write his name, 
and brought back with him a little gold dollar, which 
he dropped into my hand, saying: "If thee will let 
me take thy little prospectus inside, I think I can get 
thee several more names.'^ 

Hardly a moment had passed, as it seemed, when he 
returned with five more gold dollars to drop into my 
hand; then a little lot more of seven, until my palm 
was nearly filled with them, and I was saying to my- 
self: 

"How easy it is going to be to sell the little books 
when they are out, and do all that I should have done 
for those dear ones in that cottage home," when, quicker 
than a thought could repeat it, I, myself, was looking 
on myself again, exactly as, five summers ago, I stood 
overshadowed in the vision, with all the little rounded 
bits of gold in my hand being spirited away, as it 
seemed, by those same thoughts shut up in my heart. 
As you can imagine, the sudden translation into real 



18 THE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

life of that scene, once so mystic and unimaginable, 
was overwhelming; and when the dear old gentleman 
came back, bringing the little prospectus with him and 
three more of the tiny circles, I was trying to hide my 
tears. I could not prevent his seeing them, though; 
and supposing me, of course, weeping over my mis- 
fortune, he said kindly : 

"A great sorrow has come to thee in thy young life, 
but *as thy day so may thy strength be,' my child !" 

My tears, though, were all tears of joy over this one 
more proof that, as the sixth scene of the vision is 
surely passing, so the remaining four must one follow 
the other even to the last, and the light break agaia 
over my way. 



« ♦ i» * 



To 
Miss Eliza Hamilton, 

Geneva, N, Y, 



VOICES FROM AFAR. 19 



CHAPTER II. 

VOICES FROM AFAR. 

'New York, September, 18Jt9. 
One has said: "They are our best friends who de- 
mand from us our highest." Then, dear Mrs. Hardy, 
thou art assuredly the queen of mine, since, at the 
bare thought of thee, my soul rises up and would fain 
put on purple, while my heart is complaining ever that 
I have not golden wreaths of thought knotted with 
immortelles wherewith to set thy name around, and 
something dearer and sweeter than friend to call thee 

by. 

This is a dreamy half summer and half autumn day, 
and I fancy you going for the last time to sip from 
those joy-giving springs of old Virginia, making little 
pilgrimages to every crag and peak, and gazing long 
and lovingly on each mountain scene — something as 
the birds take leave of their summer homes, or as beauti- 
ful Eve turned reluctant from her hallowed haunts in 
Paradise. 

One year ago we strolled for the last time amid the 
breezes by the bay and climbed the dear old hills of 
Syosset; we knelt together in the little church there, 
lingered by the little lake, drank once more from the 
Cocoa Spring, and quitted sadly the murmuring shores 
of the sea. You told me much that was in your heart 
that day, but what was shut up in mine, alas! I had 



20 TEE FORESHADOWED WAY, 

no words for. Indeed, I had not learned to whisper 
it even to myself without blushing or shuddering with 
fear, and how name it then to a very queen, rustling 
along in her silks, and talking of her proud and beauti- 
ful home where she says to one: 

" ^Go,' and he goeth ; and to another 'come,' and he 
Cometh." 

Yes, how tell you then, sweet one, that I had fash- 
ioned in my heart the plan of publishing a little book, 
the better to buy gloves and shoes and the much or 
the little that one needs? Success, though, makes one 
bold; and, now that it is so nearly done, I must ex- 
plain to you that in the spring, when you were going 
to the mountains to attend tournaments and feasts, 
pace those gay halls and sip from sparkling cups, with 
a little prospectus in my hand, I came down the long 
steps of the Institution out into the dark world to 
solicit subscribers for a little book that I, myself, as- 
pired to publish. The angels were with me though, 
and one touch of their white wings melted the coldest 
heart to kindness. In the hurry and bustle of business 
and amidst problems half solved, gentlemen paused, 
read my brief prospectus, wrote their names, paid their 
money, and often escorted me to the door, and saw me 
safely down the stairs, perchance directing my gentle 
guide where to find others as kind as themselves. 

Now, dear Mrs. Hardy, I write you to please gather 
up all the missives I have troubled you with from time 
to time, and send them back to me. My little book is 
to be a collection of my letters ; it lacks yet a few, and 
possibly you may have one or more in your keeping 
that you will allow me to give a place in it. You are 
surprised, I know, but, you dear one, I had to do 
something, and as ever so faint an effort savors some- 



VOICES FROM APAn. 21 

what of virtue, better fail trying than never to have 
tried. The world, alas ! is not so high that, like Heaven, 
it takes ^^the will for the deed;^' but nevertheless "A 
book is a book," and mine will at least be something 
for me to smite the heart rocks of the tvorld with along 
my wilderness way! 

Oh! you can never, never imagine the imprisonment 
these gloomy walls have become to my soul, or conceive 
how I long to get out into the wide, wide world. Be- 
sides, as a German philosopher says, "The way to study 
human nature is through the keyhole,'^ and although 
I may never more read books, I may yet study mankind 
even better than those who see. Enveloped in these 
clouds, myself will be a sort of probe to each heart 
while I go on measuring souls, weighing thought and 
feeling, or judging spirits by their voices, as some 
writer says the wise angels do. Oh ! yes, let me go, let 
me go! Misfortune is its own protection, and with 
God and the angels above, and a little friend to guide 
the wa}^, I may learn the lessons that I may never more 
read, and, perhaps, live the book that I could never 
write. But alas ! my volume must first pass the ordeal 
of editors, and wait their praise or criticism to pro- 
nounce it verily a book. 

Ah ! the world ! What terror is wrapped in that word, 
and how I have besought the Lord, night and day, to 
take the fear of it from my soul. But why so fear the 
world? Its pride is short-lived, and its pomp but a 
name. As the morning scorcheth up its beauties, so 
the world feeds upon its own glories and is gone. The 
world hath death in its memory, tombs in its heart, 
and is full of wailings. The world loveth not God ; the 
world seeks no heaven, and has no altar where to weep. 
Ah! then, why not rather pity than fear the world? 



22 TBE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

Indeed, my gentle friend, necessity makes slaves or 
heroes of us all; and what though neglect or scorn rob 
one's cup a little of its sweetness, the draught, I ween, 
is not the less healthful. 

Dear, dear Mrs. Hardy, that long promised month at 
your home is still in the distance, but like all shadows 
its reality must be somewhere; and if my book prove a 
sufficient success to warrant the course I have planned 
for myself, I shall ere long the more assuredly come 
to you. 

It is hard to put some things into words musical 
enough for delicate ears, and I must leave you, my 
friend, for the present at least, to your own sweet con- 
jectures as to the plan that I have planned for myself. 
Life, though, is a broken thing to me, and what is 
there left but to gather up the pieces and band them to- 
gether as best I may — not to set it up, though, with the 
best side in view, as if to fain cheat myself or the 
world that it is the same thing as new ! No, no, but to 
bear it on, on, giving thanks that no vessel is so homely 
and no life so broken or so overcast, but it may still 
hold the blessings and the mercies of God; and so 
mine be made to run over ever so little with good to 
others, learn to ask no more. 

Alas! when one has digged a grave so deep as to 
hold the sun, the moon and the stars, all that is left 
one casts in easily. And here I begin existence anew; 
no more past, no more pride, and no more anything 
but to henceforth hearken for the voices from afar and 
watch the white hands in the clouds that beckon the 
way. 

rpQ * * * ♦ 

Mrs. E. M. Hardy, 

Nor folic, Va, 



THE WIDE, FREE WORLD. 23 



CHAPTER III. 

THE WIDE, FKEE WORLD. 

New York, January, 1850. 

Oh ! success — how beautiful ! and victory — how proud 
when perched on banners so long trailing in the dust 
or drooping with fear! 

The little book, "A Place in Thy Memory," has at 
last a name and a place in the world. When it went 
to the publishers my heart stood still with fear, and I 
hardly dared to kneel and pray lest I should be asking 
of Heaven something more than it could give. Imagine 
my joy then when it came forth so covered with bless- 
ing that pens set only to criticism turned all their 
lines into praise. Reading a part of it, though, pity 
may have so blinded their eyes with tears that they 
could not see the faults in the rest. Besides, being dedi- 
cated to you, dear Mrs. ISTott, was of itself enough to 
shield it from everything but praise. Anyway, the 
little book has so far escaped all those terrible criti- 
cisms whose prerogative it is to slay and leave one yet 
alive. 

The Courier and Inquirer made the first notice — 
called it a "gem of a book." The Herald and the Ex- 
press announcements I failed to get. Mr. West, of the 
Commercial Advertiser^, said;» "We bespeak for 
this charming little volume a universal circulation;" 
and ends his long, beautiful notice by complimenting 



24 TEE FORESHADOWED WAY, 

"the authoress" almost more than he had praised the 
little book. 

Wishing to speak with the author of "American 
Poets," I took a copy to him myself. He had already 
received one, though, from the publisher, and written 
a review, every line of which is as grateful to my soul 
as must have been a song of their native land to the 
captives of Israel. He calls it "a heart book," applauds 
the quaint tenderness of its style, marvels at its chaste 
Anglo-Saxon, and finally closes with that passage 
from the preface, with which nearly all the others 
begin — "In one short month a bride, a widow, and 
blind." 

The Tribune accords to the little book "a style of its 
own," quotes from it, even, and then sends it out into 
the world covered all over with praise like the follow- 
ing: "These interesting letters breathe throughout a 
spirit of cheerfulness \/hich is equalled in fascination 
only by the exceeding beauty of the language in which 
the entire volume is clothed." 

The Mirror, though, met the shades of melancholy 
where the Tribune found only the "spirit of cheerful- 
ness," doubtless because editors read through such dif- 
ferent glasses — "These letters are not inappropriately 
numbered with those plaintive ^voices of the night^ 
which make up 'the still, sad music of humanity.' " 

The Journal of Commerce editor embodied so much 
in his first sentence that he might well have ended there 
and said no more : "This book indicates a high degree 
of refinement of feeling and of cultivation of mind." 
Mrs. Buckley clipped the following from a Boston paper, 
sent her by Mr. V/illiam E. Deane: 

"This work is no fiction from the flood of literature 
now upon us, but a true and peculiar phase of real life ; 



THE WIDE, FREE WORLD. 25 

and we feel that we hazard nothing when we predict 
that 

*"As long as the heart has passions. 
As long as life has woes/ 

this volume of letters and the name of its unfortunate 
and heroic authoress will have a place in the world." 

And so they have gone on, on, breaking praises upon 
my one little ewe lamb of a book that I thought the 
world would hardly condescend to notice at all. But 
the drollest comment was from a Scotch gentleman, 
who subscribed for a copy, and said when I met him: 

"Ye write like a bag of snakes — coilin', coilin', an' one 
never knows where ye're comin' oot." 

Another from an Elmira editor is a jewel: "In 
*A Place in Thy Memory,' Mrs. De Kroyft has given 
expression to some of the finest conceptions in the Eng- 
lish language." 

And now in addition to all the rest, I have a letter 
from you here, dear Mrs. Nott, not only covering the 
little book all over with praise from your pen, but 
hiding all its faults under a line of benediction from 
the good Doctor even. Would more of my early letters 
sent from this Institution, could have been returned in 
time; but I shall have them for some future edition. 
Mr. Raymond said in his notice, what has become to 
my heart verily "an apple of gold in a picture of 
silver": "Whoever purchases this book will not only 
receive the full value of his money" * * * 

"The full value of his money." Ah ! that has a ring 
of quid pro quo in it. Do you see? — so much for so 
much. It is an oracle which unbars the gates to this In- 
stitution, and opens up before me the wide, free world. 



26 TEE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

Altogether, this first month of the New Year has been 
a glad, happy moon to me, and I just rise up and kneel 
down whispering thanks, thanks. No heart has a right 
to stay always in the grave with its loved and its lost, 
and mine has done weeping by the empty sepulchre 
from which the heavy stone has been rolled away and 
the angel risen and gone ! All true souls, too, should 
have enough of God in them to live in the light, albeit 
the sun hides himself behind the hills, and the day no 
more breaks upon the world. The Lord and my soul 
and I have at last settled it all about the darkness in 
these eyes; and how I bless Him for that wondrous 
command: — "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do 
it with thy might." Indeed, the little word "whatso- 
ever*' seems to have been inserted expressly for me, 
as much as to say: 

"Stand not idle, thou would-be worTcer in my vine- 
yard, waiting for something more worthy or more deli- 
cate or more pleasing to do, but whatsoever thy hand 
findeth to do, that do with thy might." 

Oh ! I could just spread out my arms and give thanks 
for the fullness of this day, even as did Solomon of old 
over the completion of his temple. And pray what is 
that to me but a temple wherein all my bereft being 
takes refuge, and I find not only something to do, but 
the courage to rise up and go forth to do it? 

The publishers opposed my taking the little book 
from the trade, as it is having a "fine run," they say; 
but thanks to the providence that drove me to seeking 
subscribers for bringing it out, no one now can say 
me nay; and I am going out into the great dark world 
with something shut up in my heart to do with it, 
almost more beautiful than it would be even to see 
again. After settling up with the engraver, stereo- 



THE WIDE, FREE WORLD. 27 

typer, and publisher, and paying for as many copies 
as I had obtained subscribers for, I had a sum left that 
it seemed could have come to me only by some sweet 
miracle, like unto that of "the loaves and the fishes." 
Mr. Dean styled it "profits" from my "unique enter- 
prise," and thought it should have been more; but 
holding it in my hand' and counting it over in my 
thoughts, my clouds grew luminous with the lights I 
saw new-lighted in one cottage among the hills of the 
Genesee. Clouds illumined cease to be clouds, and 
mine have in them the sweet Pleiades even, since that 
number of fathers babies, as he calls them, are smiling 
over their desks this morning in "the city of schools'^; 
and, ah ! to keep them there now until all lovely ac- 
complishments have clustered in their lives will be joy 
enough to make sunny the darkest lane, even, of that 
long wandering way, you remember, foreshadowed in 
the vision. 

Now you see how it is all settled about the darkness 
in these eyes ; and how it is, too, that I am done mourn- 
ing and weeping — I have something to do. It is no 
great tbing, surely; but there is One in heaven who 
loves to bless little things even more than He does 
big ones. You know how He once lessened down the 
armies of Israel until they sat encamped over against 
the hosts of Syria "like two little flocks of kids." Just 
so now, all lessened down, I am going out into the 
great, dark, lonely world with the little books — ^to Wash- 
ington first. The gentle Minnie, who has helped to 
distribute them to all those who so kindly subscribed, is 
coming along with me for one year, and I am glad I 
am going. The way will be sometimes very rough and 
very dreary ; kindness will seem frosted from the world, 
and heaven too far away to pity or to hear. But I 



38 TEE FORESHADOWED WAT. 

know how to shut down the eyes of my soul then, and 
pray and trust and smile when my heart is bleeding. 
I have done that here in New York already thousands 
and thousands of times over, and come out all the 
stronger and wiser and better. 

« « « 4: 

To 
Mrs. Dr. Nott, 

Union College, 
Schenectady, N. Y. 



SOMEWHERE OR SOMEHOW. 29 



CHAPTER IV. 

SOMEWHERE OR SOMEHOW. 

New York, January, 1850. 

This is a sort of Passover night with me, Mary, my 
last within the walls of this gloomy Institution, and as 
if to give me the pleasure of sharing an hour of it 
with you, some pitying angel brought me your address 
to-day. 

It seems hardly possible that nearly two thousand 
miles of valley, hill and prairie have widened between 
us since the Fates seized the oars to the barques of our 
lives and drifted them asunder — ^}^ours far out to an 
Utopia of balmy skies and flowery fields, while mine, 
headed adverse, came quick upon a maelstrom of night. 

The engagement with Madam T , four recita- 
tions daily, and one for myself, in whatever language 
or on whatever instrument I might choose, proved all 
that it promised; and lest my Italian should some- 
where encounter a criticism like unto that from the 
Prince of Como: "and such Italian" — for the autumn 
term I joined the class of Professor M ; then dis- 
covering in the library an entire set of Rollin in their 
belle originale, 1 devoted the long winter evenings to 
the ancients until, tiring of their grave doings and 
graver non-doings, I took up music again, that always 
neglected part of my education. So, having "the chariot 
wheel employment'^ four hours of each day, and filling 



30 TEE FORESHADOWED WAT, 

up tlie interims with altercate practice and study, the 
moons v/ent on waning and coming until rosy June 
warmed once more upon the world and wreathed and 
festooned it with llov/ers. Then my William, having 
become a veritable M. D., and been some time prac- 
ticing, proposed for our wedding a day in July, Judas 
month of the year. The day dawned, though, as fair 
as need be, but when the time drew near that was to 
watch our two lives blended into one, instead of being 
led to the altar leaning upon the strongest, dearest 
arm in the world, robed in snow white, I met my be- 
trothed pillowed upon his couch with more of the light 
of heaven beaming in his eyes than of earth. A fall 
from a carriage had brought him so low; but when the 
hour and the moment had arrived for the fulfillment of 
our vows, with good Mr. Seager to officiate, we pledged 
our lives and our souls to each other. 

Ah! Mary, think what your William was to you the 
day he came to claim you for his bride, and you will 
not be surprised that with my hand and my heart I 
pledged my life also to one long day of waiting, wait- 
ing, waiting. And how little a thing, too, that seemed 
for me to give to him then compared to the joy of his 
whisper to mj heart just once: "My bride, my wife, 
my Helen !'^ 

Alas ! the sun that was never to rise upon our wedded 
life was forbidden to go down upon it also; and as the 
day went out, the lips that first set my name around 
with love were still in death, and the eyes in whose 
smile my life was to have rounded like a dream of joy, 
were closed upon the world forever. What passed in 
my soul that day, Mary, only God can know ; and all the 
days after until at last, when my poor, baffled heart had 
spent itself, and, like a sobbing child, I lay sleeping with 



80MEWHERB OB SOMEHOW. 31 

the hot tears still burniDg on my cheeks, the angel 
of destiny came and stole away the light from my eyes, 
and I awoke — no, no, call not that walcing which brings 
with it no morning and no day. Say, rather, that 
the I, or tJie me that was, died then, and another / 
or me stood forth in this new strange existence shrouded 
in perpetual night. 

But to go back still farther, Mary. Do 3'ou remember 
the evening in the Lima Seminary, when, after prayers, 
I coaxed my roommate, Carrie, to go and sleep with 
Libbie, and let you come and pass the night with me ; 
and after locking the door and drawirg do\m the cur- 
tains, I crept up close beside you and tDld you all about 
a strange vision of darkness that had swept before my 
spirit-eyes that day just an hour before noon; and al- 
though only a second in passing, had left upon my 
mind the weight of centuries? You remember it, I 
know; and let me tell you 

Two years after, when my William had been but a 
month gone, and I was to leave Eochester early the next 
morning, bidding the ladies, in whose house he died, and 
with whom I had been stopping, good-night and good- 
bye, something one of them said brought that gloomy 
vision all back to me like a flash. I spoke of it, and 
then yielding to their entreaties, I sat down and re- 
peated it all, marvelling as I went on, at the accuracy 
with which my memory had treasured its minutest 
phase. Then I went to my room, and after running 
my eyes over a copy of William's obituarj^, which a 
friend of his had brought me that evening, printed on 
white satin, my lamp going out, I turned back the 
blinds, and sat down by the window while the solemn 
bells rang off the hours : eleven, twelve and one. Then 
I lay down, but soon rose again, fancying that I heard 



32 THE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

the rumblings of distant thunder. But the sky was 
still clear, promising naught but brightness on the 
morrow. Meantime, the bell tolled slow and solemn 
iwo; and then, folding my shawl closer about me, I 
lay down again, leaving the curtain drawn and the 
^^'indow up. So I slept and awoke as I have told you 
above, only to go forth and wade through, or live 
through, all the gloomy scenes foreshadowed to me in 
that fated vision. 

My father had no longer the lands and the home that 
grandfather left him. He had become poor, and could 
I go back and add one more to the nine already de- 
pending upon his care, and, dear, sweet mother besides ? 
Doctor Backus, of Eochester, was then State Senator, 
and through his kind intercession I gained admittance 
to this institution, thinking in time to become an 
organist. But to my joy, I found among the inventions 
for the blind a very available means of writing, and 
straightway began to write my soul out in letters, which 
were not long finding their way not only into the 
papers and periodicals of this country, but some of them 
were copied into the papers of England also. And now 
with this I send you a little book of them, Mary, which 
is just being announced to the world, entitled, "A 
Place in Thy Memory." 

I used to tell you that I ought never to marry, but 
go and help my dear father educate all my younger 
sisters. But love made me too selfish for that. I went 
my own way, and you see how I came out. Now, 
though, I am going to do what I should have done in 
the first place : live, as far as in me lies, to make their 
lives beautiful; live to plant step-stones whereon they 
may climb to the purple clusters that once T thonpht 
only to gather for myself, and I leave to-morrow for 



SOMEWHERE OR SOMEHOW, 33 

Washington. The editors of New York have already 
introduced me and the little book to the editors there. 
I have a precious package of letters, too— one to Sen- 
ator Houston, of Texas ; one to our Senator from New 
York; one to the chaplain of the Senate, and, besides, 
one, worth all the rest, to our grand old Koman of 
Kentucky, Henry Clay, as well as several to distin- 
guished ladies. So with the little books, a sweet attend- 
ant, Minnie, and the angels to lead, I am actually going 
forth to the wanderings foreshadowed in the vision, in 
which, you remember, what I wandered to gather or 
gathered as I wandered changed three times. First 
came the shining specks or bits of gold— and what 
were they but the little gold dollars being issued by the 
Government now? Do you see?— if the last two scenes 
of the vision prove as real as so far six of them cer- 
tainly have, then somewhere or somehow before I die 
I am to be both very rich and see again. Put that down 
in your heart, Mary, and never cease praying for me 
until some day in my wanderings the good angels set 
me down by your far-away prairie home. 

I go first to Washington, then on to Charleston, and 
then away West, away North, and away everywhere. 
Something like Paul's strait of "necessity is laid upon 
me," and I must go. Indeed, I could not stay if I 
would. 

The sweet Minnie, who has engaged to share my 
wanderings for a year, is sleeping here in my long, 
white, slim bed, crawled away at one side, expecting me 
to come and lie down beside her. But having your ear 
to-night, Mary, I must make a sort of wrestling angel 
of you, nor let you go until the morning breaks and I 
have told you all about it. 

Hark! it is morning already — the night is ended. 



34 THE FORESHADOWED WAY, 

Oh! so, ere long, the long night that has swallowed 
up my young life must end also. Meantime, I go wan- 
dering up and down the world, linking about my soul 
lessons from God's great open book of human life; go 
to turn its immortal leaves, alternate damp with tears, 
glittering with joys and blotted with woes; go to read 
with shut eyes, pausing to con over its living, breath- 
ing, and ever-varying characters as one finds them smil- 
ing in palaces, pining in garrets, and waiting by the 
corners of the streets. 

Alas! that doleful bell, that has so often awakened 
me from dreams of the beautiful bygone, rings now 
while the gates to all the past are closing heavily be- 
hind me; and with this early dawn, sweet Minnie, the 
little books, the Lord, the angels and my soul and I 
are going forth to return to these gloomy walls no 
more, nevermore. 

To 
Mrs, Wm. Weld, 

Illinois, 



TEE FIRST DAY OUT. 35 



CHAPTER V. 

THE FIRST DAY OUT. 

Washington, January, 1850. 

Not more to relieve }'0"ur solicitude, Mr. Dean, than 
to gratify my own heart, I hasten to acquaint you of 
the safe arrival and pleasant reception of sweet Minnie, 
the little books and myself at the capital. 

Desiring to stop at the National Hotel, we took con- 
veyance there and climbed the stairs to the reception 
rooms with some fifty others, only to hear the gentle- 
manly landlord affirming over and over to one and an- 
other that there was not a vacant room left in all his 
house; and that he had scarcely had a place to sleep 
himself the last two weeks, so great had been the rush 
to the capital since the holidays. 

Then sitting there by ourselves, how hopeless and 
helpless Minnie and I seemed compared to the ladies 
all around who had husbands or sons or brothers or 
somebody with them to go out and seek pleasant 
quarters, while they did nothing but sit there and wait 
and chat and laugh and be gay. Presently, however, 
leaving the rest, the pleasant landlord came over to 
us. 

"You are alone, ladies?" he said. 

"Yes," I replied, "and the more sorry that we are 
not able to get even ever so small a room with you." 

"Not more sorry than I am," was his reply. "It 



S6 THE FORESHADOWED WAT, 

is our misfortune that we cannot accommodate all who 
come. But please be seated," he said, "and give your- 
selves no uneasiness. I make it a point to send out 
and find places for ladies who come to me unaccom- 
panied by gentlemen, when unable to accommodate 
them myself." Thinking now that much might de- 
pend upon his favor, I said: 

"In place of an introduction to you, sir, please let 
me show you at least the names of those to whom I 
have the honor of bearing letters" — at the same time 
taking from the pocket of my mantle that blessed little 
package from you, Mr. Dean: the first to Mr. Clay; 

then. Chaplain to the Senate ; Mrs. Commodore A , 

and so on, and so on. He glanced at them, and smiling, 
handed them back to me, saying quickly: 

"These are all right; some of them residents of the 
National, I see, and I shall try to find you a place as 
near here as possible." So he left, but was hardly 
out of the room before Minnie, pressing my arm, whis- 
pered : 

"Why, how did you know to do that? Why, that 
was just the thing. You should have seen how smiling 
and pleased he looked when he handed them back. We 
shall have a nice place now, you see!" 

Twenty minutes had hardly elapsed when the clerk 
entered, and coming over to us the first, said: 

"Ladies, I have found a very pleasant room for you 
at the United States, where are stopping some twenty 
southern Senators and their families this winter;" and 
taking the satchel from Minnie, he led the way. 

We were presented to the proprietor, Mr. Fuller, and 
shown up to our room at once, which the maid was 
hastening to put in order. After her departure the 
fireman still lingered, brushing, rattling about, taking 



TSE FIRST DAY OUT. 37 

off the blower, and putting it on, meantime giving us a 
running account of all the people in the house. 

"Why, miss," he said, "I tell you de trufe. De Na- 
tional hab all de floatin^ an^ trash like; but de real 
astocracy ob de Senate an' de Navy an' de press am 
stoppin' in dis yere house, as dey alius does. Why, 
dars fo' gov'nors yere an' dere fam'lies; an' dars Mr. 
Heiss — he's de editor ob one of de grandest papers in 
de city — de Globe aw Republic, dunno which. An' 
yer's right on de flo' yere wid Commodore Moore an' 
his lady; dey is from Texas; an' Gov'nor Morehead ob 
de Senate, he's from Kentucky.'^ Finally imagining 
that it was a fee our man was laboring for, Minnie gave 
him something, and we were left alone to congratulate 
ourselves upon finding our lines so delightfully cast. 

"Such a pleasant room," Minnie exclaimed, "two 
large front windows, inside blinds, and lace curtains 
even. We are right in the center of the city, too, so 
convenient to every place, and so near the National." 

"The good angels have surely cared for us beautifully 
so far," I replied. "The good angels!" she said, "I 
am glad you believe in them, for they have been my 
friends all my life. My father died when I was only 
six years old. We were living near two dear old Swiss 
people. The gentleman had been a professor in a col- 
lege, and they promised to educate me beautifully; so 
mamma left me with them while she went away house- 
keeping, until an uncle got rich in the West and bought 
her the place where she lives now." 

"Then that is the way you came to speak French so 
lovely," I rejoined. 

"Yes," she said, "and the way, too, that I came to 
believe in the angels. The dear Madame used to tell 
me when she put me to bed that a black one and a white 



S8 TSE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

one were always stationed by my pillow until I went to 
sleep, the white one waiting to see if I would repent 
and be sorry for all the naughty things I had said and 
done during the day, and if he saw that I was sorry, 
he blotted out all the account he had made of them and 
smiled and went away to report only good of me ; while 
the black one grew more black and went away too, 
leaving me alone to the sweet guardians of the night." 

So Minnie was chatting on when the baggage came 
up, just in time to dress for the four o'clock dinner. 
Descending the stairs to the dining-room, we met the 
landlord at the door, who escorted us in, and after seeing 
us seated, Minnie, although busy looking over the bill 
of fare, observed that he went over and spoke to one 
and another of the ladies, lingering longest with one of 
the most elderly. 

"He is telling her, doubtless, that I do not see," I said. 

"Yes," Minnie whispered, "that is it, and she is 
raising her glass to us already. She looks kindly, 
though, and I like her for all she is so proud, and not 
pretty at all." 

Minnie's sweet eyes have the happy trick of seeing 
while seeming not to see, and not a face was turned 
toward us, it seemed, that escaped her nicely discrim- 
inating glance; and aided by her running undertone 
comments, added to what I was able to read from the 
voices, laughs, themes of conversation, and so forth, 
the dinner was hardly half over before all that choking 
restraint with which I entered had melted away. 

Leaving the dining-room, seeing the ladies all mov- 
ing toward the parlors, Minnie suggested that we go 
there too. After a little she left me and went up to 
write a line to her mother, as she had promised to do 
the moment we should arrive. As the ladies one after 



THE FIRST DAY OUT. 



39 



another contiBued to enter, Mrs. Senator Bell, of Ten- 
nessee, walked straight over to me. I felt that she was 
coming, knew too that she was the one who raised her 
glass, and as she drew quite near, I instinctively arose 
and put out my hand to her. . :, . v. 

"Why!" she exclaimed, taking my hand in hers, 
"Mr Fuller just told me that you do not see." 

"Which is very true," I said, "except the shadows 

that envelop me." 

"Why, how strange!" she replied, "and your manner 

is so graceful and easy." 

"You are very kind to think so," I said, as we sat 
down together on the sofa. 

"No not at all; but some way my heart is always 
drawn to the blind, and I had a great deal to do with 
making the State of Tennessee build an institution tor 
them," she was saying, when Mrs. Senator Dawson, of 
Georgia, came over and joined us-a sweet, timid, loving 
little lady, who seemed to bear in her smiling presence 
all the sunshine of her State. Presently Mr. Dawson 

'"''c'ome here, my dear," his little wife called. Mrs. 
Bell introduced him, and while he was drawing up an 
armchair for himself, Mrs. Bell left and returned with 
Senator and Mrs. Morton, of Florida; then came Mrs. 
WiUey and Mrs. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, Mrs. 
Morehead, of Kentucky, and so on, and so on u^til, 
before Minnie came down again, I had not only been 
presented to many of the ladies of the house, but to 
several of the gentlemen, and had a group of them 
sitting around engaged in animated conversation, the 
theme being chiefly, of course, the dark life and how 
one so young and thrust into it so suddenly as I was 
had learned to bear it so well. 



40 TBE FORESHADOWED WAT. 

"See/' said Mrs. Bell, "what a rebuke this lady's 
cheerfulness is to us all." 

"Yes/' said Senator Dawson, "and she shows us, too, 
how perfectly mind is able to triumph over the material, 
by making her other powers do the work of the lost 
one. It is doubtless by the delicacy of her hearing 
that she is enabled to turn her 03^3 so exactly to the 
one who speaks to her or whom she addresses." 

So the conversation went on until the gong was 
sounded, and Mrs. Bell gave me her arm to the tea- 
room. 

"I am going to take you over to my corner," she 
said. "My husband is at the Capitol, and will not be 
here. They have a night session, and at this meal I 
allow the children to sit around with their friends 
wherever they like, so we will have a cup of tea quite 
by ourselves." We were hardly seated when she said: 

"I am glad you have come to Washington. Indeed, 
I have met no one this winter whose acquaintance it 
has afforded me more pleasure to make, if only on ac- 
count of our institution in Nashville, which I have been 
so much interested in, and am trying to do so much for, 
and against such immense opposition, too, all seeming 
to say : 'It will do no good ; it will do no good.' Now, 
you were educated before the loss of your sight, and you 
have since had experience enough in the New York 
Institution to know exactty what the blind are able to 
attain to, and what should be done to assist them to 
reach the utmost of their abilities." 

"Ah ! that is it, Mrs. Bell," I said, "exactly what 
should be done to enable them to attain to the utmost 
of their abilities, the utmost of their abilities being, in 
my opinion, nothing less than the acme of all that man 
or woman has ever achieved, intellectually. Indeed, 



THE FIR8T DAY OUT. 41 

being forced to live wholly mental lives, why should 
not the greatest scholars and sages of the world arise 
from their midst, so only their advantages were of the 
right kind or wholly adequate to their needs?" 

"Exactly/' she said. "I believe every word of that; 
and hence it is, you see, why I am so glad you are come 
to Washington; you will do so much toward creating 
a fresh interest in your class, and I shall be proud to 
introduce you to all my friends. I know nearly every- 
body connected with the Government, from the Presi- 
dent and his Cabinet down." 

"That is very, very generous, and very, very kind of 
you," I said, "but I fear all the distinguished people you 
speak of will take very little interest in me. Indeed, 
I did not come to Washington expecting to be invited 
across any of its brilliant thresholds socially." 

"Oh!" she said, "then you have some petition, per- 
haps, to present to Congress ; if so, I can serve you there 
as well, if not better, than almost anybody in Washing- 
ton, for I know nearly every Senator and Member." 

"No, no," I replied, laughing. "You are mistaken 
again." 

"Well, just see here then," she said, laying her hand 
firmly on my arm, "I resolved long ago never to die 
of curiosity ; just tell me — what did you come to Wash- 
ington for?" 

Then I told her all about the little book, "A Place 
in Thy Memory," to whom I had letters, and what the 
editors had promised; and more still, that five hundred 
of the little books were already in the city. 

"Good !" she exclaimed, "I can sell that number for 
you myself — but hold! is it Abolition?," 

"No." 

"Politics?" 



42 THE FORESHADOWED WAY, 

^^No," I said, "the little book is largely my own life, 
only written in what they call poetic letters instead of 
chapters/' 

"Ah! well then," she said, "it must be sweet and 
lovely like yourself. I will take twenty numbers to 
begin with, and I know twenty more in this house who 
will do the same." Then, sitting back in her chair 
as if surveying me or looking the matter over 

"Upon my word, that is splendid," she ejaculated, 
as if talking to herself. "Now we have an opposition 
to Gadsby's. Mrs. Willard, of Troy, has been stopping 
there this winter, introducing her new book on physiol- 
ogy, and giving a course of lectures to the ladies. I 
subscribed for the course, and went once; but it was 
drier than politics to me, and I doubt if she has a 
dozen hearers by this time. After each lecture she has 
the books for sale. I bought one the day I went, but 
have hardly looked into it since." 

Just then her son came in, whom she introduced, and 
we left; she to dress for a Saturday night dinner 
party, and I to con over in my room the events of the 
day and evening with Minnie. 

"Well, and so this is Washington/' I said; "and be- 
fore delivering a letter we have introduced ourselves 
almost to the President." 

"Yes," Minnie said, coming and throwing her arms 
around my neck, "and isn't it too lovely for anything! 
Oh ! you should just see how smiling and pleasant they 
all are to us. The gentlemen bow to you just as 
though you could see ; I return it, and they never seem 
to know the difference." 

"But now, my dear one," I said, "it was the little 
books we came to Washington to introduce as well as 
ourselves. You heard Mrs. Bell's sweet offer to take 



THE FIRST DAY OUT, 43 

twenty copies, and we must have her find one of them 
on her table to-night when she returns from the party." 

Minnie was never in a hotel before, and her search 
for the bell that I assured her must be somewhere in 
the room was on the verge of failure, when she dis- 
covered a cord suspended from the ceiling with the 
tassel that might have belonged to it lying on the floor. 
Winding the cord around her finger, she gave it a hard 
pull, and the man to whom we gave the money was 
soon knocking at the door. 

Upon learning our errand: "'Yes, miss, I sees, I sees; 
it's de porter yer wants"— who at length came, and 
taking our express receipt for one case, he went away. 
The waited for, I believe, alvfays comes slowly. Three 
hours elapsed, and we began to doubt ever seeing the 
receipt again or the books either. At last, though, two 
men came puffing up the stairs with the case. It was 
soon opened, and Minnie wrote on the fly-leaf of one: 

"Mks. Senator Bell, 

Compliments of 

The Author.'' 

The waiter took it to her room, with a charge to have 
her maid leave it on her table; then we locked and 
bolted the door, said our prayers, and climbed into the 
highest, broadest, canopied old Virginia bed possible 
to imagine. 

"So ends," I said, "our first day together out in the 
wide, wide world." 

* * * ♦ 
To 

Mr. Nicholas Dean, 

New YorTc, 



44 THE FORESHADOWED WAY. 



CHAPTEE VI. 



Washington, January, 1850. 

When" we awoke the next morning the winds were 
blowing a tornado and pelting the windows with hail- 
stones in a way that was frightful to hear. 

"Oh! it does not seem like Sunday at all to have it 
storm so/^ Minnie exclaimed, as she parted the curtains 
to look out. 

We were among the first down to breakfast, and when 
Mrs. Bell came in with her two daughters, son and hus- 
band, Minnie whispered: "She has the little book 
under her arm. Thinks it covered, but her mantilla 
is caught up with it behind. She looked over at you, 
and bowed and smiled." In my heart I said : 

"Ah! she has been reading the little book, and is 
pleased with it, or she would never have brought it 
with her to the table.^' 

Presently Minnie, leaning over to add another lump 
of sugar to my coffee, whispered : 

"The gentlemen all have their papers, and every little 
while one puts his finger on a place and passes it along 
to another; he reads it and then looks over at us." 
This made me feel very uncomfortable, as, of course, 
I could not imagine what it might be. 

"See what papers they have, if you can," I said, "and 
when we go up we will ring and send for them." My 



"A SPECIAL EDIGTJ* 45 

breakfast had lost its relish, and hurrying away we 
came up to our room, and ordered the latest papers — 
and, oh! what a lovely little ^'special edict" the Intel- 
ligencer had copied from the Commercial Advertiser, 
of New York. 

"Oh !" Minnie exclaimed, clapping her little hands, 
"what a wreath of praise ! And, oh ! here is one in an- 
other paper, a long one. These are what they were all 
reading and looking so pleased about." So we were re- 
joicing when there came such a heavy knock at the 
door. Minnie opened it, and there stood a great stal- 
wart darky, bowing nearly to the floor. 

" 'Sense me, ladies,^^ he said, "my missus, Mrs. Bell, 
has sent me to tell you as it storms powerful to-day, an' 
nobody '11 go to church, she wants twenty ob yer little 
books to 'stribute round amongst "em to read. She likes 
de one she has powerful well; was readin' it till purty 
nigh mornin'." 

Minnie counted him out the twenty, and away he 
went with them in his arms. In about ten minutes 
little Nanny Bell came, saying: 

"Mamma wants five more of your Tlaces in My 
Memory,' and she wants to know the price of them.'^ 
Minnie wrote on a card for me: 

"Thanks, dear Mrs. Bell, all the way to the ^Better 
Land' — the little book is one dollar." In less time 
than it takes to tell it, Nanny was back again for ten 
more — this time the maid with her. 

"Mamma says that you must keep count of them," 
she screamed, as if talking to one who could not hear, 
"and she will see that it is all paid to-morrow. Mr. 
Heiss is down there. He says he has seen the notices 
of it in the New York papers, and he will have one in 
his paper to-morrow^ Mrs. Heiss took three — one for 



46 TUB FORESHADOWED WAY. 

her brother, one for herself^ and one for Mr. Heiss. The 
parlor is full of people, and they are all reading them." 
Going down to dinner^ we came to Mrs. Dawson's 
parlor just as fohe and the Senator were stepping out, 
and only Georgia herself could have fashioned a greet- 
ing more cordial. We paused to let them walk in ad- 
vance ; and locking back, Mrs. Dawson said : 

"My husband has been reading your little book this 
morning, and I saw him trying to hide his tears over 
that letter to your mother." 

"Oh I" I said, '"I should apologize to the Senator for 
having caused him to v^'eep." 

"No, indeed," she said; "he docs not weep often!" 
"Doubtless not," I ventured to add; "having you to 
love his eyes should be indeed strangers to everything 
but smiles!" 

"That is so!" the Senator exelaime.% laughing; and 

as they moved along I heard him say to her, low 

"Then you like to see me v/eep, do you, little one?" 
Without answering, back she stepped and touching my 
arm, whispered: 

"I am coming to see you in the morning. I want to 
get five of those little books to send to Georgia." 

So ilie day passed until, leaving the tea-room, Mrs. 
Bell joined me, and slipping my hand in her arm, led 
the way to her parlors. In a few moments Senator Bell 
came in with Senator Butler, of South Carolina, to 
whom I had hardly been introduced when Senator 
Toombs and General Waddy Thompson were announced. 
Minnie said afterward that the General took tea with 
Mrs. Bell, and she saw her pointing m_e out to him, and 
telling him about the little book. After a few m^oments. 
though, Minnie and I left. Parting with Mrs. Bell at 
the door 



"A SPECIAL EDICT.'' 47 

'•^Good-bye, you dear one" she said, "I am coming 
to see you in the morning and settle up my long string 
of accounts.'^ 

"Oh!'^ I said, "no matter about the accounts, only I 
shall be very proud and yqtj happy, indeed, to have 
so much light in my room!^' 

Monday morning the skies were as clear again as if 
they had never rained anything but sunshine, and true 
to her promise, right after breakfast Mrs. Bell was 
tapping at my door; then, as one blessing is wont to be 
followed by another, she was hardly seated when Mrs. 
Dawson was announced with a lovely bouquet in her 
hand. 

Mrs. Bell had fifty dollars to pay — five from each 
of those senators that we were introduced to the even- 
ing before; and in. place of five copies, Mrs. Dawson 
would take ten. "Five more,^^ she said, "to send to 
some friends in Charleston" — a little paving of the way, 
you see, for my visit there. And, ah! Mr. Dean, you 
should have beard the praises they had to shower upon 
my one poor little ewe lamb of a book ! What this one 
had said, that one and the other; and more than all, 
that they were all going to have copies. 

Those trite little words, thanlc you, my heart had 
worn threadbare before I had been in the dark a month ; 
but had they been as new and unspoken as the last 
love-whisper among the angels I should have exhausted 
them utterly in New York. Indeed, loug before you had 
the kindness to place that little package of letters in 
my hand, I had com-C to feel such a perfect dearth of 
fitting phraseology for acknowledging kindnesses re- 
ceived, that I stood before you with them there like 
one bereft of speech — aye, and hearing too; m_y heart 
stood still and I could only think^ think. At last, 



4g TEE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

though, I believe I did stammer out: "Mr. Dean, you 
are the noblest, best man who has ever lived !'^ At 
least, that is what I have been saying ever since, and 
ought to have said it then whether I did or not. But 
how find words now dear and sweet and beautiful 
enough to thank these stranger ladies in for their over- 
whelming kindness ? How tell them half how beautiful 
and generous it was of them to have changed so many 
of the little books into gold dollars, literally crowding 
my portemonnaie with them when, as yet, I had only 
been in Washington one stormy day, and that all the 
Lord's own, even to the evening thereof ? 

So I was thinking when they rose to depart, and 
hardly knowing where I should come out, I said : 

"My visit to Washington, ladies, has taught me al- 
ready what it is to be born where flowers are perennial 
and summers last all the year round." 

"Yes," said Mrs. Dawson in her sweet musical way, 
"but we do not gather such bouquets from our flowers 
as this you have brought us from your northern lands." 

"No, indeed," Mrs. Bell rejoined, "and I mean she 
shall sell every copy she has brought here, and as many 
more if she can." Just then Mrs. ex-Governor Doty, 
of Wisconsin, and her daughter were announced, who 
had come also for the little book, "A Place in Thy Mem- 
ory." 

And so they went on coming, coming all the day long 
until evening, when, counting up, Minnie found that 
one hundred of the little books had already been turned 
into gold dollars. 

"Ah!" I said, "exactly as it was in the vision, pick- 
ing the shining little pieces from the gloomy presence 
that everywhere overawes me." This is another feature 
of it, too, quite as literal: What has been going on in 



"A SPECIAL EDICT" 49 

my thoughts has already borne the shining things from 
my hand almost soor.er than I have gathered them. To- 
morrow I must get a draft for that smiling little troop 
of mine in the Ailen Seminary, the joy in whose hearts, 
when they hear of ni) success in Washington, will be 
enough to melt blessings to them from the hands of the 
angels themselves. 

* * 9fi « 

To 
Mr. Nicholas Dean, 

New York. 



50 OI'HE FORESHADOWED WAT. 



CHAPTER VII. 



NEVER DOUBT AGAIN. 



Washington, February, 1850, 

The third morning after my arrival I waited upon all 
the editors of the city with copies of the little book, and 
was surprised to find their offices upon the first and 
second floors instead of the fifth and the sixth as in New 
York. 

Mr. Gales, of the National Intelligencer, recog- 
nized me at once, and how polite and beautiful he was ! 
When I rose to depart, he said: 

"Wait a moment," went into another room, returned 
and insisted upon paying me for the book. 

"Excuse me, Mr. Gales," I said, "if you will be 
pleased to notice my work it will be a thousand times 
paid for." 

"Certainly not," he replied. "I should be sorry, in- 
deed, if I could not pay for an interesting lady's book 
and speak well of it, too, when I am so sure of its being 
doubly deserved." I still declined taking the money. 

"But," said he, "you must! I have just been and bor- 
rowed this dollar of a friend whom I have not seen for 
nineteen years till this hour, when I left him to speak 
with you." To object further was impossible, and I 
said: 

"Ah! then you shall surely have the pleasure of 
scattering that golden ray in my path." Then he 



VEVER DOUBT AGAIN. 51 

dropped the little gold dollar that he had borrowed from 
his friend into my portemonnaie, and we left. 

The editor of the Republic was less cordial. His long, 
beautiful notice, though, that came out the next morn- 
ing more than compensated. He quotes from the little 
book, praises its style, and altogether commends it so 
heartily that one would expect to see half of the city 
hastening to buy one. 

The editor of the Globe says in his notice what I 
heard you say once: 

"Eyes that do not see the light should never know 
tears." He does not quote it. Was it original with 
you then, and is it now original with him? Possibly, 
since great minds do sometimes leave the same "foot- 
prints upon the sands of time." 

Dear Mr. Dean, if, when the citizens of New York 
appointed you their honored representative to go out 
and receive the "Sage of Ashland," on the occasion of 
his last visit there— if, I say, you chanced to feel some 
little misgivings as to exactly what you should say or 
how you should say it, why ! even then do not imagine 
that you have the slightest conception of what I suf- 
fered lest, not seeing, I should wait upon his highness 
in a way as to be anything but pleasant either to him or 
to myself. Four days having elapsed, though, since the 
announcement of my arrival, I felt it no longer polite 
to defer the presentation of my letters; and every 
thought being burdened with what I had to do, leaving 
the dining-room that morning, I chanced to say to Mrs. 

Bell: 

"I must deliver my letters to-day, especially to the 
two senators, Mr. Henry Clay and Mr. Samuel Hous- 
ton." 

^'Oh! Mr. Houston is in Texas/' she said, "called 



52 V^E FORESHADOWED WAT, 

home by the illness of his family, so you will have no 
bother with him ; and as for Mr. Clay, just let me tell 
you how to do it. At eleven he goes to the Senate, and 
you must be at the National prompt on ten o'clock ; that 
is his time to receive. Eing the bell. The porter will 
show you to the ladies' parlor and then bring Mr. Clay's 
body-servant to you, who will take your letter and card 
to his master, and return with word when he will be 
able to see you." 

That was a little programme for me, you see, and one 
step seemed to draw the other after it like a charm. 
The servant was hardly gone a moment when he came 
back and said: "Mr. Clay will be able to see you in 
about five minutes." 

During the interim I do not know what Minnie was 
thinking about, but every thought in my soul was whis- 
pering to itself: 

"Oh! if these clouds could only break away for just 
one moment, just long enough to catch a glimpse of 
the great chair and the great statesman in it, to whom 
I was to have the life-long honor of being presented !" 
But just imagine my surprise, Mr. Dean, when Mr. 
Clay met me at the door himself and slipped my hand 
in his arm as gracefully as if he had been taking les- 
sons of you or the angels; and crossing the room, 
seated me in the great arm chair that, but a moment 
before, I had been picturing him enthroned in, looking 
so formidable and proud ; the while the grace of his 
manner and the easy flowing words from his lips made 
me feel as perfectly comfortable as if seating me he 
had said, drawing up a chair familiarly by my side: 

"Now, my child, let us forget that we are strangers, 
and have a little talk here all by ourselves." 

First, your very good health was asked after; then, 



NEVER DOUBT AGAIN. 53 

your good qualities enumerated, which Mr. Clay finally 
put all into one little summary when he said : 

"One does not need many such friends as Nicholas 
Dean." Then, in the most delicate way possible, the 
conversation turned upon the little enterprise that had 
brought me to Washington, how I managed to write, 
how long my little book had been out, etc., etc., in no 
other way, however, referring to my not seeing until I 
spoke of it myself, in which he manifested the deepest 
interest, and after a little said, directly : 

"But, madam, you retain so perfectly the manners 
of a seeing person, that I am as yet hardly able to per- 
suade myself that you do not see." 

"Thank you, Mr. Clay," I said. "Those words will 
linger longer in my thoughts than anything you could 
possibly have said to me, I am so constantly in fear of 
appearing awkward or unpleasant to those whom I 
meet." Then something like a tear moistened in my 
eyes, which Mr. Clay must have seen, for in an instant 
I felt my hand pressed warmly in his. 

"Your young life has been greatly and strangely be- 
reft," he said, "but, as my friend tells me here, you 
have talent and culture still left, and I hope a very 
brilliant future in store ;" and went on presenting my 
dark privation in so many advantageous lights that I 
almost felt it a blessing rather than a misfortune. He 
spoke of all the illustrious blind, and remarked that 
the world seldom appreciates them while they live, 
probably from the great retirement or seclusion in 
which they necessarily pass their time. Then General 
Scott and several others were announced, and we rose 
to take leave, but not until he had charged me many 
times to call again very soon and let him know how he 
could best serve me. 



54 TEE FORESHADOWED WAT. 

"I seldom make calls," said he, "but I shall surely 
visit you ;" and then he said low to Miunie : 

"Please bring me a copy of your friend's little book." 
And then the drollest thing ! he asked her if we had not 
a little book, a prospectus or something that we were 
going to take the names in. 

"I should do that," he said. 

ISTow just listen to this, Mr. Dean, and you will never 
doubt the angels being with us again. On the way up, 
seeing that we had left the hotel a little too soon, I said 
10 Minnie: 

"We will stop in one of the book-stores, then, select 
some paper and call for it on our way back." When 
right at the door, Minnie said: 

"Oh! here are some lovely bound blank books, such 
as you spoke of getting to take all the names in." We 
selected a very pretty one, and not staying to get the 
stationery, Minnie took it with her under her shawl; 
and when Mr. Clay spoke of taking the names, reading 
my approval from my looks, she gave it to him. He cut 
the string with his knife, unwrapped it and wrote his 
lofty name: 

"H. Clay of Ashland," 

the fiisi in our list of purchasers. Then he folded the 
paper around and would have tied the string again, 
but Minnie said: 

"Never mind, Mr. Clay," and took it from his hand. 
Then, as we moved along toward the door, I felt that 
eloquent arm of his half around my shoulder, the while 
he repeated: 

"Be sure to come and see me again very soon, and lei 
me know how jou get along." The servant showed us 



NEVER DOUBT AGAIN, 55 

down to the door, and we were hardly on the walk when 
Minnie exclaimed: 

"Why! Mr. Clay knows everything, doesn't he?" 

"Yes, indeed," I said. "I should really think he had 
been blind himself some day and sold his little book, 
too, for a living, else how could he know about a pros- 
pectus and taking the names and all that, and how did 
he know, too, to take my hand and slip it into his arm 
instead of standing and offering it to me as half the 
gentlemen do." 

"Yes," Minnie added, "and look at me wondering 
why you don't take it !" 

We were going next to wait upon Mr. Phoenix, but 
when almost there^ I said: 

"No, I will tell you, let us go and wait upon the 
President. It will be just splendid to have his name 
next to Mr. Clay's." But then, I had chanced to hear a 
gentleman say at the table: 

"The Cabinet meet to-day," so, of course, the Presi- 
dent will be engaged. Walking along, though, I de- 
cided it would be all the better to go when he would 
be engaged, as then I could leave a note for him ex- 
plaining briefly my errand, and asking as the choicest 
possible souvenir of my visit to Washington, the pleas- 
ure of hearing his voice. Minnie coincided with that. 
We hurried back to our room, wrote the note and went 
directly to the White House. Of course the keeper of 
the door said: 

"It is Cabinet meeting, and the President will be en- 
gaged for some hours." 

"But, then can I not leave a line for him?" I asked. 

"Certainly," he replied, and motioned us over to the 
desk in the far end of the room, where Minnie, taking 
an envelope from the table^ slipped my note into it 



5e TEE FORESHADOWED WAT. 

But then came the trouble as to how to address it. I 
suggested one way and she another, until finally we 
settled upon: 

"President Taylor, 

Executive Mansion, 

Washington, D. C." 

handed it to the man and left. 

In the note I appointed three o'clock for calling again, 
having learned that to be his usual hour for receiving 
in the afternoon. I thought then nothing would deter 
me from being prompt to the moment; but returning, 
Minnie mistook one of the public buildings for the 
White House, and going the wrong way it was after 
four o'clock before we reached it. Entering the grounds 
a horse, feeding there, galloped away, when one of the 
gentlemen walking behind us said to the other : 

"That is old Whitey, the President's old war-horse, 
and he seems to enjoy the honors of his new situation 
quite as much as his master. At first he was as gentle 
as a lamb — anybody could approach him — but since so 
many have pulled relics from his tail and his mane, 
at the bare sight of a stranger he takes to his heels 
as if all the ghosts of the dead Mexicans were after 
him." 
i The man at the door was all politeness 

"Why !" he said, "I am glad you've come back. The 
President sent down directly to say that when you 
came again he would see you whatever he was doing." 

"That was very kind of the President, surely," I re- 
plied, "but as we are so late he is, perhaps, engaged." 

"The President is at dinner^ madam^ but I shall 
call him/' 



NEVER DOUBT AGAIN. 57 

"Oh ! certainly not while he is at dinner," I ventured 
to say ; "I will wait with pleasure." 

'^The President must be obeyed, madam, and he said 
he would see you when you came again, whatever he was 
doing." 

Feeling myself rebuked for daring to suggest even the 
shadow of treason in the President's house, I consented 
to be shown to the receiving parlor, where he seated 
us and then seemingly moved every chair in the room; 
and when at last so far away that I thought he had 
departed, lo! back he came giving the bottom of my 
dress a jerk, spreading it out around me on the carpet 
in a way that made me wish it an elegant silk instead of 
a bombazine ; then folding my mantle back over my arm 
and moving the chair next me once more, he left, look- 
ing back over his shoulder, Minnie said, until the door 
closed after him. 

In less time than it takes to think it, even, the Presi- 
dent entered. I arose and stood by my chair and 
bowed. He took both of my hands in his for a moment, 
turned, bowed to Minnie, and then sat down opposite 
me. I said: 

"I should apologize, Mr. President, for having called 
you away from your dinner." 

"Not at all, not at all," he repeated ; "only from des- 
sert, and it would be a good thing if we had somebody 
to call us away from that every day — ha ! ha !" 

Nothing breaks fear and dispels restraint like a 
laugh. 

"On the contrary, Mr. President, one who has served 
his country like General Taylor, I should think would 
more fear never receiving his desert/' This made 
him laugh again, and turning the subject abruptly, he 
said: 



58 THE FORESHADOWED WAY, 

"You blind people have a way of picturing everybody 
to yourselves; and now let me ask — do you find me at 
all such a person as you expected to meet?'^ 

'^Hardly/' I replied. "That cool exclamation of yours 
to General Bragg in the roar of battle, 'A few more 
grape !' made me picture you to myself a hero all war- 
rior/' 

"But now?'^ he asked. 

So many have questioned me that way since the loss 
of my sight that without the least hesitancy I gave him 
for answer the first impression that had come to my 
thoughts : "Why ! instead, I meet the voice and manner 
of a gentleman, not only genial but kindly even to ten- 
derness." 

"Ah ! madam/' he said ; "that is worth leaving more 
than one dinner for — ^but wait ! I promised to let my 
daughters see you. We have read your little book; we 
did not, however, get it after we heard that you were 
coming. A lady from your hotel sent it to my daughter, 
Mrs. Major Bliss ; and soldier that I am, some tears did 
trickle dowTi my face over that first letter to your 
mother." Then, "Excuse me," he said, and went to 
the dining-room for his daughters, returned with them 
and introduced them himself; also a friend who is 
visiting them from New Orleans — an honor, Mrs. Bell 
says, conferred upon no other lady this winter. 

After the ladies entered we did not sit again, but 
exchanged a few words standing, and I turned to leave, 
when, in an instant, the President was slipping my 
hand in his arm, and when we reached the outer door 
I thought surely he would leave me ; but no ; the servant 
opened the door and out he stepped upon the veranda. 
He had not his hat, I was sure; and I imagined the 
cold winds blowing through his thin hair^ and woadered 



NEVER DOUBT AGAIN, 59 

that he did not let me take my hand from his arm, 
when he said : 

"John, why do you not call this lady's carriage? 
These hackmen are getting so afraid of the cold they 
go around the other end of the house V 

Oh ! Mr. Dean, Mr. Dean, what a moment was that ! 
How could I say to the President that I came to see him 
on foot, and that, too, when he had been so gracious, 
so gallant, and so beautifully polite? But wit, though 
a dangerous talent, sometimes serves one even better 
than wisdom, and bending my head to him, "Excuse 
me, Mr. President," I said, "but knowing that in wait- 
ing upon your highness I was to have the honor of 
speaking with Major-General Zachary Taylor, I made 
a Hebrew Sabbath of it, and walked up!" 

Oh! Mr. Dean, you should have seen the President 
bow away down; then, rising and taking my hand ex- 
claim : 

"The most beautiful compliment, madam, that I have 
ever received ; and you must allow me to make a Chris- 
tian Sabbath of it and see that you ride back. John, 
call my carriage to take these ladies home, and accom- 
pany them yourself." Then stepping back a moment 
to wait, he said : 

"Mrs. Taylor is going to send down for a package 
of your little books." 

"Ah!" I said, "that is very beautiful of her, Mr. 
President, but since the little book and its unfortunate 
author have found such favor in your sight, I would 
fain ask just one indulgence more. Mr. Clay suggested 
to me to-day that I take the names or autographs of all 
those who are pleased to take copies of me, and had the 
kindness to head the list himself; and I should prize 
very much the name of Zachary Taylor alongside his." 



60 TEE FORESHADOWED WAY, 

''Certainly, certainly/' he replied; "I shall be only 
too proud to write my name next to that of Henry 
Clay's anywhere, and so you will send up that little 
book of autographs, I will write mine for you with the 
greatest pleasure." Just then one came for the Presi- 
dent, and excusing himself he said, the last thing, part- 
ing: 

"I shall look for you certainly at my next levee, and 
you must come to every one of them as long as you stay." 

So we left. The surprises and pleasant things of the 
day, though, were not to end there. Just as we were 
leaving our room to go down to supper, the servant 
came up with three cards on a tray that had been left 
on me, he said, that day — one from no less a personage 
than Mrs. General Hamilton. Look at that, Mr. Dean ! 
You will be still more surprised, though, when I an- 
nounce to you the next one, Mrs. ex-President Madison. 
Can you believe it ? And the third, but not least, Mrs. 
Commodore Shubrick, who has been to see me twice 
since, once to take me a long, lovely drive ; and the best 
of all, Minnie suggests, each time her carriage has borne 
away in the bottom of it a package of the little books. 
What she does with them I do not know, only that two 
of them have been sent to her thee and thou friends in 
Baltimore ; and Mrs. Bell says she was a lovely Quaker- 
ess herself before she married the Commodore. Part- 
ing with her the day we rode, "I want you to come with 
your little friend and dine with me next week," she 
said. My looks must have revealed what I was think- 
ing — can I go, can I? — for as if to remove my fears, 
**We are a small family," she said, "my daughter and 
her husband. Dr. Clymer; the Commodore is away, 
and I have only invited a few friends, all of whom I 
know will be delighted to mee! you. I will send my 



NEVER DOUBT AGAIN, 61 

carriage for you, and bring you home as early as you 
will like to return/' So the engagement was made, 
and to be my first dining-out in Washington. 

Oh! Mr. Dean, if I could only see! If the angels 
would only unveil these eyes just long enough for me 
to be nicely seated at the table and see all of those who 
are around me ! But then, seeing, I should never have 
been here, should never be there, should never have 
written the little book, nor anything. Ah ! never mind, 
never mind, I say to myself a thousand times a day, the 
long dark vision with its four more scenes will all ere 
long be waded through, and then the light again, oh! 
the light! 

4: « ♦ * 

To 
Mr. Nicholas Dean, 

New York, 



THE FORESHADOWED WAY. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

ONLY THE CICERO. 

Wasliington, February, 1850. 

When I promised to write you once a week, Mr. 
Dean, and tell you everything, I had no idea that tell- 
ing you everything would amount to one quarter what 
it does. 

The next morning after my visit to the President, 
Mrs. Taylor sent down for ten copies of the little book ; 
and Mrs. Dawson having offered me the use of her 
servant whenever I should wish, I sent him as bearer of 
the one in which the President was to write his name 
alongside that of Mr. Clay. When he came back, Mr. 
Dawson' added his and proposed to take it with him to 
the Senate and get all the names of those senators who 
had taken copies. He did so and brought it back at 
night graceu with the names of Jackson Morton, U. S. 
S. of Florida, Waddy Thompson, Jeff. Davis, Seward, 
Bell, Clinch, and so on, over two pages of them; then 
all the ladies in the house who had taken copies added 
theirs, making altogether such a beginning as the 
Chinese Solomon must have been thinking of when he 
said : "The beginning is half of the whole." 

But although two hundred copies of the little book 
had been disposed of, there were three hundred still 
left. Friends, calls, compliments, dinings-out, drives 
and "a' that and a' that," are pleasant things to have, 



0:NLY the CICERO, 63 

but you see to sell the little books was what I came to 
Washington for, and the notices now being well ont 
and still all fresh in the minds of the people, with this 
splendid beginning there was nothing lacking but cour- 
age to go out and wait upon the citizens of Washington 
just as I did to get the subscribers in ^N'ew York, giving 
the gentlemen, of course, the preference. Accordingly, 
Minnie put fifty copies of the book into the bag, the 
colored man took it, and led the way to the State De- 
partment. There, I asked to speak a moment with the 
Secretary of State, which was granted; and explaining 
my errand to him in the fewest words possible, he said 
at once : 

"We will take six copies for the State Library," and 
moved away to write his name with the rest; mean- 
time, Minnie stepped back for them to the colored man 
in the hall, and placed them upon his table. Thank- 
ing him for his kindness, I asked if there would be any 
objection to my waiting upon the clerks and officers 
through his department. 

"Not in the least,'^ he said, "and I only hope you may 
find them all prepared to take copies.'^ So, thanking 
him again and apologizing as best I could for my homely 
intrusion, he bowed us out, Minnie said, as politely as 
if we had come to him with a message from the Presi- 
dent as well as his signature. Then we went on through 
all the offices upon that floor and the one above, when 
every copy was gone ; and we returned having been ab- 
sent from our room just three hours. 

After dinner, meeting Mrs. Bell in the parlor, I ex- 
plained to her how I had passed the morning. 

"What a hero in the strife of life V she exclaimed ; 
and soon all the ladies were gathering around lauding 
my courage. 



64 THE FORESHADOWED WAT. 

"Why ! that is what I have to do/' I said, "and what 
I shall doubtless have to go on doing until something 
better brightens over my way." 

Finishing the State Department we went next to the 
War Department, and so on through all the Government 
buildings of the capital. 

The morning before the first President's levee that 
I was to attend, I waited upon Mr. Webster, with a 
little note to him from General Waddy Thompson, who 
has come to be one of the best friends I have in Wash- 
ington. Mr. Webster was sitting for his portrait, but 
down he came with the note in his hand. 

"Pray, madam," he said hurriedly, "can you give 
me any idea of the contents of this note ? I can't read 
a word of it but my name at the top and 'Waddy 
Thompson' at the bottom, and I doubt if the General 
could make out a word more of it himself." Seeing that 
he was in a great hurry, I said: 

"The note tells you, I believe, Mr. Webster, that the 
bearer of it is blind and selling her own little work for 
herself, and invites Mr. Webster to please become the 
purchaser of a copy." 

"Ah! I shall do that with the greatest pleasure," he 
said, "but what is the price ?" I told him, and handing 
the money to Minnie and taking the book, "There, that 
is all right now," he said, "good morning !" and before 
I could show him the book of names or ask him to write 
his, he was mounting the stairs again, Minnie said, two 
and three steps at a time. 

Mrs. Bell insisted upon being my cMperone to the 
first levee. The President having seen me only once, 
and then in winter wraps, meeting me now dressed and 
having Mrs. Bell's arm, he did not recognize me until 
by a little word she called his attention to my not seeing. 



O^LY THE CICERO. 65 

*'0h !" he exclaimed, "this is my arch complimenter !" 
at which Mrs. Bell laughed and we passed on to meet 
his daughters, both of whom were receiving that even- 
ing. After a little we chanced upon a young North 
Carolinian widower, who is stopping at our hotel, and I 
heard him say to Mrs. Bell: 

"Allow me the pleasure, madam, of playing escort to 
your friend a little while;" and having his arm, I 
seemingly had no need of eyes ; he saw everything, knew 
everything, and described everything and everybody. 
By some strange fatality, three times during the evening 
I was introduced to Mr. Webster, and twice to Mr. Clay, 
who said the first time: "I have not been to see you 
yet, madam, but I am surely coming." 

Through General Waddy Thompson I had previously 
passed an evening at the National, where I made the ac- 
quaintance of Mrs. General Ashley, who is to the fash- 
ionable society here what Madame Eecamier was to 
the Court of Napoleon. Having her sweet favor was 
indeed a passport to at least the polite attentions of 
many others, and it was when with her and a group of 
the friends to whom she had introduced me that the 
President came and spoke to me. I recognized his 
voice at once, which seemed to gratify him. Just then 
Mrs. Bell, Mrs. Dawson and Mrs. Morton came up and 
several gentlemen. Toward the close of the evening, 
I had the arm of Mr. Yeatman, a son of Mrs. Bell by 
her first marriage ; who, after escorting me over all the 
mansion as it seemed, conservatory, etc., was telling 
me about a strange old painting that we were standing 
before, when the President passed again and stopped 
to ask how much longer I would stay in Washington, 
invited me to come to his next levee, and bowing, passed 
away. 



ee THE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

The next day returning from one of the Departments, 
having a few copies of the book left, I said to Minnie : 

"When we come to some of those nice old Virginia 
residences, we will stop and, perhaps, get rid of these 
before we reach home." The servant man, who was 
walking behind, heard me, and turning the corner he 
called : 

"Dar, miss, right over dar is de res'dence ob Lieu- 
tenant Hunter, ob de Navy. Dey is powerful rich, an' 
ef he's dar, yer won't bring none ob dese books away, 
I reckon.'' We stopped. The colored man rang and 
then waited outside. Minnie had one of the little books 
and the book of names in her hand with a little shawl 
that covered them. 

Mrs. Hunter received us as if we had come in state, 
while a dear "Aunt Sally" there, who had lost her in- 
tended in the war of 1812, and had read the little book, 
took me into her heart of hearts at once. The Lieuten- 
ant sat down close by me because, as he said : 

"I am a little deaf from a fall I once had." They 
insisted upon our staying to dine with them. The 
Lieutenant would not be denied, so Minnie dismissed 
the man, we laid off our hats and took seats with them ; 
and when we came away the carriage was at the door. 
The Lieutenant handing us in, placed a little paper in 
Minnie's hand which contained the pay for not only 
as many books as the man had carried away in the 
satchel, but for five more. 

The next Sabbath after church they called and in- 
sisted upon our leaving the hotel and making the rest 
of our stav in Washington with them. Feeling that it 
would be doubly awkward to be going out every day 
with the little books from their elegant mansion, I pro- 
posed to compromise by promising to pass a week with 



ONLY THE CICERO. 67 

them after the remainder of the little books were 
gone. 

"No, no!" Mrs. Hunter said; "we have a boy wh6 
knows everybody and every place in the city, and you 
can have the carriage any time you like. Your room is 
all ready, the fire lighted, and we want your cheerful 
presence among us more than we can make you know. 
The Lieutenant says you have made his loss of hearing 
seem half less to him already, while Aunt Sally groans 
for you constantly." 

Ah ! they are Virginians, indeed, in whom is lodged 
every manner of good thing, and we are to go to them 
next week. Commodore and Mrs. Moore are to take 
me with them to the next levee, and I thought it better 
to remain in the hotel until after that. Besides I have 
an invitation from Mrs. Ashley to the next reception 
at the National; besides, too, Mrs. Dawson's colored 
man knows not only all the names of those who have 
subscribed, but their number and the exact day and 
hour when he is to go to them. 

Learning by this time that it is more polite to make 
calls in a carriage than on foot, I ordered the man here 
to select me a nice modest looking equipage, and went 
to return Mrs. General Hamilton's visit, or rather her 
card. The dear old lady, in whose heart is cased a 
memory so dark that no smile and no joy have ever 
been bright enough to illumine it, received me more 
than kindly. Indeed, there was something so tender 
in her manner that if I had known nothing of her his- 
tory, I should have said in my heart at once: "She 
knows what it is to weep for the loved and the lost." 

After the compliments of the morning and we were 
seated, "Are you finding your visit to Washington 
pleasant?" she asked. 



68 I'SE FORESHADOWED WAT, 

"Yery, indeed, thank you/' I replied. "Barring the 
regret I feel at not being able to see all the distinguished 
people I meet, the days bring me nothing but pleasure." 

"Ah! that is very charming," she said. "I have 
heard several of the ladies at your hotel speak of you 
as quite the most cheerful, entertaining person among 
them." 

"One's gaiety, though," I replied, "is not always an 
index to the looks one would wear were one privileged 
to speak and to act as one feels." 

"No," she said; "and but that even our greatest sor- 
rows come back to us softened by memory and made 
more bearable to us by time, we could never smile, I 
sometimes think." Then seeing that Minnie's sweet 
eyes were attracted to one and another of the quaint ob- 
jects upon a table in the center of the room, she rose 
and placed in my hands a cup and saucer from which 
she said General Washington had often sipped his 
coffee with her husband and other of his generals around 
her table. 

"The chair, too, that you have, I have often seen him 
reclining in as well as many others of that time who 
have long since passed away." There were many 
relics of the Eevolution upon the table, all of which 
she pointed out to Minnie and explained to me very 
kindly. 

It was her and her daughter's reception day, and 
thanking her for the honor and the pleasure of her 
card, which I told her would be cherished ever as one 
of the choicest souvenirs of my visit to Washington, 
we left to call on Mrs. ex-President Madison, but found 
her just descending the stairs with a lady on either 
side helping her down to go out for her morning drive. 
She stopped a moment, though, at the parlor door, ex- 



ONLY TEE CICERO. 69 

changed a few words, and making me promise to be 
sure and call again, they helped iier slowly down the 
steps; after which we descended and entered our car- 
riage, which, being faced the same way as hers, 1 told 
the driver as he closed the door not to leave until hers 
had driven away. 

True to his promise, Mr. Clay called the second day 
after I met him at the President's levee. We were 
descending the stairs to go out when the waiter handed 
me his card. First I thought to go back and lay off 
my wraps; but being where he could see us, Mr. Clay 
came quickly out and, taking my arm, walked me right 
along into the parlor, where we had just the briefest, 
choicest, loveliest little visit in the world. I told him 
that I was going on to Charleston soon. 

"Then I must give you a letter to one of my friends 
there,^' he said. "But how have you succeeded here?'' 
he asked. Thinking of no better way of answering, I 
showed him the book of names, with the President's 
name next to his, and all the rest that followed. It 
would have done you good, Mr. Dean, to watch him 
reading them down, smiling, Minnie said, as though 
he saw each man in his name. I told him that I had 
been to the Senate Chamber to hear him speak four 
times. 

"Ah !" he said, with so much surprise that I ventured 
to say : 

"Indeed, half the pleasure I anticipated in coming 
to Washington was to hear America's three greatest 
orators, Clay, Webster and Calhoun." 

"And have you heard us all ?" he asked, laughing. 

"Only the Cicero," I replied. 

"And not the Hercules?" 

"No^" I said ; "each time Mr. Webster has either just 



70 THE FORESHADOWED WAY, 

finished speaking or is not there; and Mr. Calhoun is 
ill, they say." 

"Yes," he replied, "and so very ill that some have 
even expressed doubts of his ever appearing in the 
Senate again/' and he arose to depart, giving one hand 
to Minnie and one to me. "Now be sure to come and 
see me before you leave," he said; and with the kind- 
liest good morning possible, he was gone. 

Ah! what an infringement upon the laws of polite 
society — you are saying to yourself — selling her little 
book days, and attending the President's levee evenings ; 
calls, too, receptions, breaking bread even with the 
greatest and the best. Sometimes I stop and wonder 
if some good angel does not come along and so veil the 
eyes of all whom I meet that, seeing me, they see not 
me at all, but a somebody instead mantled o'er and o'er 
with the sweet graces of their own beautiful indulgence. 
The first time, though, Mr. Webster was introduced to 
me at the President's levee, talking a moment with Mrs. 
Ashley, whose jewelled arm I had, Minnie amused her 
sweet self divining the funny sort of twinkle in the 
corners of his eyes, which I interpret to say: 

Alas ! what incongruities one stumbles upon in this 
conglomerate society of ours — out with her little book 
in the morning, and at evening presented to me arm in 
arm with the protecting angel at the very gate of fash- 
ionable society. 

Ah ! Mr. Dean, there is no way of accounting for some 
things, save that the unseen have to do with them. The 
hand that five summers ago trailed that mystic vision 
of darkness before my spirit eyes is meeting me now 
here at every turn in the way. Indeed, as I look back, 
I seem to have been treading upon enchanted ground 
from the very first day this darkness stole upon my 



ONLY THE CICERO. 71 

life, as thiougli by it the very world itself has been 
turned into a sort of heaven wherein, walking linked 
hands with the angels^ I find all gates ajar. 

« 4: * 4: 

To 

Mr. Nicholas Dean, 

New York, 



72 TEE FORESHADOWED WAY. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE BENEDICTION" OF HIS NAME. 

Wasliington, March, 1850. 

After nearly two weeks with the delightful Hunters, 
I returned to the hotel yesterday both to make ready for 
our departure on the morrow, and to go with Mrs. 
Bell in her carriage to this afternoon reception at the 
White House. 

Mrs. Taylor is rarely seen, Mrs. Major Bliss, the 
younger daughter, does the honors, and listening to her 
conversations this afternoon with one and another of 
the ladies as they came and went, I said to myself: 

*^She lacks nothing, while from me has been taken 
away even that which I had." Yet, believe me, I did 
not feel to murmur nor much to envy although the con- 
trast, you will admit, was hardly a thing to smile 
upon! 

Taking leave of the President, I mentioned inad- 
vertently my departure for Charleston on the morrow. 

"But who of your friends here have given you 
letters?'^ he inquired. 

"Oh! all those to whom I brought them," I replied, 
"besides several very flattering ones from Mr. and Mrs. 
Hunter, some from my friends at the National, quite 
a number from the ladies of my own hotel, and a 
lovely little packet from Mr. Clay." 

"Then you will not go to the City of Palmettoes un- 



THE BENEDICTION OF EI8 NAME. 73 

announced," he said, "and I only hope all Charleston 
may come out to receive you." 

"Ah!" I replied, "if they do not go the other way I 
shall be only too thankful." 

"No danger of that," he said; "Charleston is one of 
the most hospitable as well as one of the most beautiful 
cities in all the South." 

Then, after I had thanked him as best I could for all 
his kindnesses during my stay in Washington, he gave 
me his hand with a very fervent good-bye, as Mrs. Bell 
moved along to make her adieux. She lingered, though, 
quite a little, and at the close of their conversation I 
heard the President say, almost mournfully: 

"And we shall be glad when we are in our camp 
again." 

Then we drove away, Mrs. Bell seemingly too much 
occupied with her own thoughts to converse, and I, the 
while, busy replacing the fast fading anxieties of my 
visit to Washington with those of a much longer journey 
already stretching out before me. 

But now listen, Mr. Dean. If you should live a thou- 
sand years you will never hear a thing so astonishing: 
Hardly an hour had elapsed when the President's body- 
servant came to me with the most beautiful letter of 
introduction from the President himself that the world 
has ever seen, introducing me to the City of Charleston, 
and to all his friends in the whole South, joined by 
his family with "best wishes for a pleasant journey!" 

Oh, Mr. Dean, Mr. Dean! When Minnie read the 
starry name of "Z. Taylor" upon the envelope, I could 
hardly believe my senses. I felt as though a thousand 
rainbows had been suddenly bent above my heart, all 
telling of promise, assurance and hope ! Why ! through 
all my wilderness way, through all the wanderings of 



74 THE FORESHADOWED WAY, 

the lonely vision, through all that I have to live through 
and live out, this precious letter will be to me even as 
"a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night." 
"But the letter," you say, "the letter !" 

"Washington, March 19, 1850 
"S. H. De Kroyft, 

"Dear Madam: — ^Understanding that you are about 
to leave for Charleston, I take this opportunity to ex- 
press the deep sympathy which your case has elicited, 
and to invoke in your behalf a kind reception among 
my friends in the South. You are recommended to 
them by every circumstance which can add interest to 
misfortune, and I gladly bespeak for you the friendly 
offices of the proverbially generous and hospitable com- 
munity which you propose to visit. 

"The members of my family join me in best wishes 
for a pleasant journey, and I remain, dear madam, 
"Very sincerely yr friend, 

"Z. Taylor.^' 

Now you have read it, Mr. Dean, and I can almost 
see the great tears melting in your kindly eyes. Oh, 
it is too beautiful for anything, and would I could set 
a like star in his way whose light should never go out ! 
But, ah ! the name of Zachary Tajdor is itself a wreath 
of fame, and his own shining deeds are stars that 
will light his brave heart even through the Valley and 
the Shadow of Death, and brighten immortal beyond the 
grave. So all I can do is to pray kind heaven to crowd 
his life with length of years, swell his minutes to hours 
and link them all with sunshine and flowers, even as 
he has linked my name forever with his. 

Think not, though, that I one moment forget the 






THE BENEDICTION OF HIS NAME. 75 

*'Open Sesame" that your little packet of letters was to 
my entrance here, nor what the pleasant heraldings of 
the New York editors have been to me every step of 
the way. No, nor what they, are likely to be since the 
Washington editors have commenced already repeating 
their pleasant announcements to the editors of Charles- 
ton, who will doubtless be no whit less indulgent to a 
little enterprise that not only all Washington has come 
out to sanction, but the President, even, has stooped to 

hallow with the benediction of his name. 

* * * * 

To 

Mr. Nicholas Dean, 

New York, 



70 .THE FORESHADOWED WAY. 



CHAPTEE X. 

LIGHTING NEW LIGHTS. 

Charleston, April, 1850. 
Leaving Washington for Charleston, Minnie was 
just counting out the moneys for our journey, tickets, 
etc., when a card came something like the one you gave 
me once from New York to Eochester, only signed : 

"B. Hunter, U. S. N. 

and let rae tell you, Mr. Dean, if it had been a parch- 
ment from the Turkish Sultan, covered over v»ith all 
the insignia of oriental royalty, it could not have in- 
sured sweet Minnie and me a more lovely smoothing 
of the way. Why ! at sight of it, even, the baggage- 
master turned knightly and shoved along all the trunks 
without one word about extra haggage. What the Lieu- 
tenant has to do with the road or what sway he holds 
over it is m.ore than I know — only this: He should 
have "an highwa}^'^ cast up expressly for him the world 
through, and no lion of charge ever allowed to go up 
thereon either. 

But, dear Mr. Bean, you will hardly believe this, it 
is too beautifully, too beautifully true: Since our ar- 
rival here four hundred copies of the little book have 
been changed to gold dollars, and sweet Minnie says 
they have often paid her five and ten dollars for a single 



LIGHTING NEW LIGHTS. 77 

copy. One hundred and fifty were taken from the book- 
stores in a day and a half, the book merchants refusing 
anjrthing for their trouble, and seeming almost offended 
when I spoke of it, merely from reading the news- 
paper notices of the book and of the letters I brought, 
which, perhaps, I should have let the editors copy as 
they wished to do, one insisting that they presupposed 
publication, especially the one from the President. 

Oh! what a worry, too, that letter has been to me, 
Mr. Dean, not knowing whether I should let it be pub- 
lished or reply to it even. It was addressed to me, you 
see, and it seemed only polite to acknowledge so gra- 
cious a favor ; but replying, what to say and how to say 
it was the trouble. But at last quoting somebody to my- 
self who says "Errors are only half errors that lean to 
virtue's side," I ventured to write to him thus : 

"Charlestoi^, S. C, April 7th, 1850. 
"Major- General Zachary Taylor, 

"President of the United States of America: 

"Most Kind and Most Esteemed Sir : — While I beg 
the privilege of replying to your distinguished favor 
of Washington, March 19th, 1850, I can but regret my 
inability worthily to acknowledge its most gracious con- 
tents, and thank you for the great honor it does me. 
He is indeed the father of his people who thus stoops 
to bless even the humblest of his care. 

"Ever since our arrival in Charleston, both carriages 
and servants have been at my command, while hardly 
a day has passed without invitations to dine at one place 
and pass the evening with a party of the learned and the 
good at another. Hundreds of the little books have 
been taken, the while the editors have never ceased say- 
ing the nicest things editors can say both for the littje 



78 TEE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

book and its unfortunate author; and to all of which, 
as well as to every other good that has come to me in this 
land of song and flowers, those few lines with that im- 
mortal name ^Z. Taylor' at their margin have been 
the spirit prompter. Oh ! for this one good deed, dear 
Mr. President, you should live a thousand years. You 
have bent a bow of protection and honor above my dark 
life and set a light along its way that will never go 
out. 

''^From this little work I hope ere long to realize for 
myself a home ; and when that is done, never, never will 
my lips cease to breathe blessings on the heart and life 
and memory of him who with dauntless heroism has 
served his country and with parental kindness blest even 
me. 

"Desiring to be remembered to the members of your 
most excellent and your most esteemed family, in all 
grateful love and all high regard, 

"I remain forever, 
"Your Most Obliged Friend and Servant." 

S]C ^ 3|C S|C 

Do tell me, Mr. Dean, did I say too much to the Presi- 
dent or should I not have written him at all ? 

Yesterday at a special dinner, given in honor of some 
one at this hotel, my name came up, it seems, in con- 
nection with the President's letter, Mr. Clay's, Mr. 
Houston's, and others, which they had all read about; 
and before rising from the table, Mr. Marquand, of 
Brooklyn, proposed that they should one and all repair 
to the drawing-room, ask to see the lady and treat 
themselves to copies of her little work, "A Place in 
Thy Memory." Nearly all the liadies and many gentle- 
men of the house were in the drawing-room when they 
entered ; and Mr. Mixer, the landlord, coming over, pre- 



LlGETlNa IV^U LiGBTS. '^9 

sented to me a perfect stranger, as I supposed, but who 
proved to be the veritable Mr. Marquand whom I had 
the pleasure of meeting at Mrs. A. S. Barnes' New 
Year's reception a year ago, and spoken of in my letter 
of that day as "the polished Marquand," then just home 
from Europe, and now putting out his hand so beauti- 
fully to me here. Other presentations followed, then 
Mr. Mixer said: 

"These gentlemen, Mrs. De Kroyft, have read of 
your little work and are desirous, every one, of becoming 
the happy owner of a copy." 

Minnie ran up to our room for them, and as it hap- 
pened, found Mrs. Walters' colored boy waiting at the 
door with her card and bouquet, who came down with 
the little books in his arms. Minnie had the book of 
names, headed by Mr. Cla)^, the President, Senators 
and so forth, in which every one was pleased to add his 
autograph. It took Mr. Mixer and Mr. Marquand all 
the tim.e to make change while the colored boy went 
flying up and down the stairs for the books until the 
last one was gone — one hundred in less than an hour. 
The ladies all joined in, took copies and wrote their 
names like the rest ; and Minnie said that they laughed 
all around their faces and they all seemed so happy too. 

A Baltimore gentleman, who had read the little book, 
and remembering what I say in it about a cottage for 
myself some day among the trees, said to me low : 

"Your cottage is going np rapidly now, madam." 

"Yes, indeed," I replied, "the angels themselves have 
taken it in hand ;" which he repeated much to the amuse- 
ment of the others. Love, though, is swift-winged, ar.d 
even there, Mr. Dean, while this stranger was speaking, 
my thoughts were busy lighting new lights in a far- 
away cottage that is. I saw in its stead a larger and 



§0 TBIS FOltEmABOWBD WAT. 

worthier home rising for the sweet mother and the 
dear father to welcome back their absent ones from 
school in. Verily, what is to be we have a tendency to ; 
and here again you see, as everywhere, even while the 
hand was being filled from the great dark unseen, the 
thoughts like invisible messengers came to bear it away 
— exactly as it was in the vision, forever gathering, 
gathering, but never possessing. 

After it was all over, going up to my room, Mrs. 
Captain Anderson, of Florida, overtook me, and paus- 
ing at the top of the stairs, she unclasped a beautiful 
mourning bracelet from her sweet arm and fastened it 
tenderly upon mine, charging me to wear it, a keepsake 
from her dear self. So even from the rising of the 
morning until the stars appear, Charleston is just so 
lovely and beautiful and good. It seems that the sun 
can never set among these palmettoes and they must 
have day always, so much of heaven is here. Music, 
music, everywhere ! Music when you go to sleep ; music 
the first thing in the morning, and then come love and 
smiles and kisses all the day; and flowers, flowers so 
full of odors that they seem almost to breathe ! This 
morning Mrs. Andrew Turnbull came with her car- 
riage and took us six or eight miles into the country. 
Minnie clapped her little hands all the way at sight 
of the immense trees so beautifully festooned with 
moss and garlanded with the Cherokee rose, which runs 
through the forests here like a cord of love, binding the 
trees all into a beautiful brotherhood and wreathing 
them o'er and o'er with white and yellow blossoms. 
Before leaving Washington, Mrs. Shubrick whispered : 
"The Commodore has been writing his friends in 
Charleston in a way to secure you a very cordial recep- 
tion among them, I think." And, oh ! Mr. Dean, the 



LIGHTING NEW LIGHTS, 81 

very first day after my arrival a servant brought up 
to my room a little tray of cards with ail these beauti- 
ful names upon them. First, Colonel Isaac Hayne, Mrs. 
Hayne and their daughter, Miss Hattie; Captain Shu- 
brick and lady ; Miss Trapier, sister to Mrs. Hajne, and 
her brother, Eeverend Paul Trapier, a very Fenelon in 
spirit. 

One has said that an Episcopalian always carries the 
creed in his voice ; then a minister might be expected to 
have the litany also. At all events, there was no mis- 
taking Reverend Paul Trapier for other than an Episco- 
pal clergyman; and seeing no better way of interesting 
him, I asked about his parish or the location of his 
church, expecting him to name St. Peter's, St. Paul's or 
some other of the most aristocratic of the city. Then 
imagine my surprise when he replied: 

"Mine is only a Mission Church, madam, devoted 
exclusively to the colored people of Charleston." 

"Yes," exclaimed Miss Hattie, "and uncle built it 
all himself, and he teaches the people there every Sun- 
day from early morning until night, and auntie helps 
him, too, in the Sunday School." 

"And Miss Hattie also in the singing, does she not?" 
the uncle rejoined. 

"But I thought the negroes were not allowed to read !" 
I said. 

"No," Mr. Trapier answered, "they are not. It all 
has to be taught them orally." 

Eising to leave, Mrs. Hayne and the Colonel arranged 
that we v/ere to pass an evening with them the coming 
week, when Mrs. Hayne said: 

"We shall try to have the pleasure of introducing you 
to all of Uncle Shubrick's relatives, for Charleston is 
the Commodore's dear old home," 



82 THE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

"Our number is not quite Legion/' added the Col- 
onel. 

"Nevertheless a host in themselves^ Colonel Hayne 
■will allow me to think/' I said. 

"Ha ! ha !" laughed Captain Shubriek, "we do surely 
represent the iirmy, the Church and the Navy." 

Miss Trapier, taking my hand, said: 

"If you would like to attend brother's church next 
Sunday, I shall be very happy to call for you and your 
little friend." And, oh! Mr. Dean, not to have heard 
those sable Africans go through all the Service, the 
chants and all, depending upon no book, is never to 
know one half how beautiful and how heart-mending 
the Episcopal Service may be; just as never to have 
dined and passed an evening at the home of Colonel 
Isaac Hayne is never to know how lovely the people of 
Charleston can entertain. 

Among my letters from Washington, one was to 
Doctor and Mrs. Gilman, who lost no time calling; and 
having read everything Mrs. Gilman had published up 
to the time of losing my eyes, as you can imagine, it 
was like an old acquaintance revived meeting her here. 
The first time they called, a gentleman came with them 
who was at the President's the evening I had the pleas- 
ure of accompanying Mrs. Moore and the Commodore; 
and almost the first thing he said to me was : 

"Excuse me, but when I met you last, madam, you 
had the arm of the most beautiful lady at the capital 
this winter — Mrs. Commodore Moore." 

"Ah!" I replied, "no wonder you thought so, seeing 
her ladyship playing angel so beautifully to me that 
evening." But hardly waiting for my last word, turn- 
ing to the Doctor he exclaimed : 

"Upon my honor, Doctor, the head-dress Mrs. Moore 



LIGHTING NEW LIGHTS. 83 

wore that evening was the most becoming thing I ever 
saw on a lady !" — a matter in which a reverend doctor 
is hardly supposed to be au fait. Still, he seemed all in- 
. terest, and Mrs. Gilman was indulgent enough to talk 
right along as though she might have found in it the 
theme for a new poem. 

Eeturning their call, I had the pleasure of meeting 
there Miss Fredrika Bremer and the distant relative, 
Mrs. Howland, with whom she is stopping here, both 
of whom left their cards on me the next afternoon. I 
was out, but returned their call that evening, and we 
were hardly seated when Miss Bremer, still holding my 
hand in that sweet little one of hers, exclaimed in her 
broken English: 

"Vat von lovely compliment you have pay me in your 
book dat Mrs. Gilman have present to me, with about 
me marked !" 

The next morning Miss Bremer was to leave, and by 
the kindness of Mrs. Howland I was invited to break- 
fast with them at seven o'clock as the steamer left at 
eight. It rained fearfully, though, and the hackman, 
whom we had engaged the night before, failed to get 
us there in time. But as it happened. Miss Bremer was 
left by the boat, and up through the rain came the love- 
liest note and bouquet inviting me to dine with her and 
pass the afternoon as she would not leave then until 
the next morning, for which Minnie seemed really sorry. 
We went however, and had the pleasure of meeting a 
starry little party of ladies, among whom Mrs. Caroline 
Gilman and Miss Fredrika Bremer, of Sweden, of 
course, ranked first magnitude. At our first meeting, 
Minnie pronounced Mis^ Bremer the homeliest lady 
she had ever seen. To-day, though^ at the dinner she 
said to me; 



g4 ^^^ FORESHADOWEn WAY. 

"If you could see Miss Bremer now you would think 
her really beautiful/' Then I imagined those Norland 
eyes of hers all ablaze with the high thought she was 
expressing, the subject of conversation being the noble 
Ilypatia and the scholarship accessible to the women of 
her time. 

Mrs. Howland and her daughters, it seems, were trav- 
elling in Norway and Sweden not long since, and their 
meeting Miss Bremer there resulted in her visit to 
America, and our pleasant interview "with her jthat 
day. 

"So we are led," remarked Mrs. Howland, "and I 
only hope we may at last make a circle in the beauti- 
ful home above," to which Miss Bremer replied in her 
positive way: 

"No; you may all have dat mingled heaven vat you 
so much desire, but I must have von little star all by 
myself. Sometimes I vill give invitations and — vat 
you call it? — pick-mc^'sf — and den I must be retired 
again." 

"That is fair," I replied, "and we will petition for 
the author of *The Neighbors' the brightest star in all 
the heavenly borders only so she continue to write books 
there for her sister spirits in other lands, the same as 
now," which elicited a general laugh; and making it 
the signal for rising. Miss Bremer gave me her arm 
to the drawing-room where, dropping down by my side, 
she asked: 

"Have you ever read ^King Rene's Daughter,' madam? 
The young princess was blind. I forget her name, but 
it is one of the finest dramas in the world." 

Dear Mr. Dean, if trying to tell you everything, as 
was your very emphatic charge, I weary you, it is be- 
cause so much has been crowded into these few little 



LIGBTING NEW LtGHTSi. 85 

weeks, all too beautiful to leave out; and yet I have not 
seemingly told you the half. 

To-morrow I turn back North, and after the long- 
promised visit with my friend, Mrs. Hardy, at Norfolk, 
I make a little stop in Washington and then on to 
New York, whence, before commencing another tour 
with the little books, I go to "Stone Cottage" for a 
visit with my parents and the six absent ones who will 
be home then from their first half year away at school. 
After which, peradventure, I go West or farther North 
until autumn winds blow and the birds take wing; then 
I come again South, over all of whose sunny lands the 
way has been so beautifully set along with lights and 

friends and flowers by the President's letter. 

« ♦ * ^ 

To 
Mr, 'Nicholas Bean, 

New York, 



86 TMB FORESHADOWED WAY, 



CHAPTER XL 

THE HOME OF '^EVANGELINE." 

Boston, October, 1850. 
Hardly a word to you, dear Mrs. Nott, since my 
first day out from New York with the little books. Hav- 
ing a package of letters from Mr. Dean to his friends in 
Washington, his charge to write him everything that 
transpired to me there seemed imperative. Besides, no 
.day in all my journey South was ever long enough 
for the half I had to do. And now it is just so here. 
The little books themselves are wands that evoke de- 
mands incessant. Then add to that the little army of 
letters I had to deliver, every one of which has brought 
me a friend, and some a dozen or more — ^ten of them 
from Dr. Bellows, of New York, to distinguished clergy- 
men in and around Boston — Gannett, Peabody, Bartoll, 
Waterston, Huntington and others, whose very shadows 
have proven honors that have lighted all the days, even 
as their kindnesses have paved with blessing every step 
of the way. Dr. Parkman, one of them, has just been 
in for five copies more of the little book. I tried to 
have him let Josey take them to his place. 

"No, no," he said, "I have use for them on the way." 

Meantime the editors in Boston have been doing for 

the little book and its author exactly what the editors 

did in Washington, Charleston and New York. Some 

of them have added to their notices a copy of the Presi- 



TEE HOME OF ''EVANGELINE," 87 

dent's beautiful letter with the immortal "Z. Taylor" at 
its margin. I withheld it from publication from sheer 
fear of making too familiar with His Excellency's favor, 
until reaching New York my editor friend of the Com- 
mercial Advertiser argued that it was hardly polite to 
the kindness of the President not to use his letter; and 
the next morning it appeared with a very graceful 
preface from himself. 

Ah! coming down the steps of the Blind Institute 
that bleak winter morning with Minnie's little hand on 
my arm, going out into the wide world everywhere to 
introduce my own work, how little I dreamed that ere 
I should leave the first place, Washington, Major-Gen- 
eral Taylor, President of the United States, would put 
his brave hand as from out the clouds, and invoke in 
my behalf the kindly offices of all his friends in the 
stranger land I had hardly the courage to enter. True, 
I had a little package of letters, including one to Mr. 
Clay, leading almost up to the head of the Capitol. 
The most I hoped from them, though, was peradventure 
to find in each a purchaser of the little book. But, dear 
Mrs. Nott, the Lord Himself is in it all, and His angels 
began a long way back to mark out the lines my steps 
have been falling in. 

Mr. Sargent, to whom I brought a letter from the 
Commercial Advertiser, never tires saying pleasant 
things in his paper, more avoiding than referring to the 
bereavement of my wedding day and the loss of my 
eyes, as if he knew how painful it must be for me to 
be hearing it over and over. 

The letter I had to Dr. Newell, of Cambridge, secured 
me a visit with Mr. Longfellow, the poet, at his vener- 
able mansion, so dear from its associations of the 
Eevolution.. 



88 THE FORESHADOWED WAT. 

We found the great poet in one of those illusory moods 
which disposes one to be pleased with almost every- 
thing. Meeting us, at the door he gave me his arm to 
the library, a large pleasant room. We were hardly 
seated when he said : 

"Here I am wont to receive m,y choice spirits/^ 

I thanked him for the compliment, and remarked 
that I was exceedingly happy to meet the author of that 
holy thing, "The Psalm of Life," although I had not 
the pleasure of seeing him. 

"Excuse me, my friend," he replied, "but in one sense 
I imagine that you see far more clearly for not seeing. 
At least I am conscious here of another spirit looking 
in upon mine very searchingly"— which he said re- 
minded him of an Italian officer who lost his eyes in 
battle, and when old and infirm conceived the idea that 
he could not die without seeing Petrarch, whose poems 
had done so much to warm his heart and fringe with 
light the wings to his fancies through all his dark 
years. So, persuading his son to accompany him they 
set off for Naples; but behold! when the old man and 
his son arrived there, Petrarch had gone to Kome. 
However, they journeyed on long, weary days, but when 
reaching Rome found that Petrarch had been crowned 
poet laureate and gone into the country. The old man's 
disappointment was then indeed sore; but the son as- 
sured him that they had now gone too far ever to re- 
turn and they might as well wander on. 

And so at last they came into the presence of Pe- 
trarch, and when the old man had felt his face over and 
passed his hands down over his shoulders, he knelt at 
his feet and lifted up his voice in thanks that he had 
lived to see the man who had given li^ht to his thoughts 
so many dark years. The bystanders laughed at his 



THE HOME OF ''EVANGELINE." gg 

thanking God for seeing Petrarch when he had no eyes 
at all! Then the worshipful old pilgrim cried aloud: 

"Petrarch, I leave it to you: Do I not see you?'' 
Moved to tears and resting his hand tenderly upon the 
bald head of the old man, Petrarch with trembling 
voice exclaimed: 

"Sire, no other man has ever seen Petrarch but you!" 

"No, indeed," he added, "we do not need our eyes 
to appreciate the excellences and attractions of others, 
but like beautiful visions they often come to us best 
with our eyes closed." 

Mr. Longfellow converses quite as lovely as he writes, 
and you listen to him with the more pleasure because 
whatever he says himself he always so happily leaves 
something for you to say. 

Taking it for granted that he had seen at least some 
of the notices of myself and the little book in the papers, 
some quoting the President's letter, others copying from 
the New York papers, and others making new ones, I 
talked with him the more freely, referring to persons 
and their places as they occurred, until suddenly he 
asked : 

"Does visiting different places give you pleasure 
now?" 

"Certainly," I replied, "a new locality now is as much 
a new world to me as when I saw." 

"I should imagine so," he replied. "But, excuse me, 
do you make visiting different places of no other in- 
terest to you than merely a new locality? I have con- 
ceived the idea that you write" — by which I saw that 
he had no idea of the purport of my visit to Boston, 
and I answered frankly: 

"Yes, Mr. Longfellow, as Dr. Young says, ^Employ- 
jnent is the chariot wheel of the soul^' and aided bj the 



90 THE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

inspiration that comes of necessity, I have written one 
little volume and engaged personally in the sale of it. 
In other words: I give the world a copy of it, and 
the world gives me a dollar instead." I was wondering 
what he was thinking when, covering my hand kindly 
with his^ he said: 

"God bless you, my child ! I understand it perfectly ; 
and I see plainly enough, too, that the mind which has 
written that one little volume should write many vol- 
umes; and certainly you must allow me to have a copy 
of this first one." 

"Oh ! no, Mr. Longfellow," I said ; "to your great 

world-feeding mind, my one little ewe lamb of a book 

would be hardly more than a primer. Besides," I 

added, rising to depart, "I am thinking how sadly out 

of place the poor thing would find itself here in the 

home of 'Evangeline' and the 'Hyperion,' to say nothing 

of their thousand and one illustrious companions." 

However, I promised to send him a copy of "A Place 

in Thy Memory" if only for the little petition couched 

in its title; and a few days after had the pleasure of 

receiving from his lyric pen a note with the promise of a 

call. The note was full of praise and I shall keep it 

ever; but when he came to make the call I was out, as 

I seem always destined to be when any starry thing seeks 

me. 

* * * 

To 
Mrs. Dr, NoU, 
Union College, 
'Schenectady, N. Y. 



QUEEN OF SONG. 91 



CHAPTER XII, 

QUEEN OF SONG. 

Boston, October, 1850. 

How like a dream of wonder is the way the little 
books are going! Twenty-five were taken from the 
hotel office yesterday, and this morning before we were 
dressed, even, the bell-boy w^as up rapping for more. 
And so they go, go, never less than thirty a day and 
sometimes fifty, beside what all the book-stores are doing. 
From nine till three I devote exclusively to introducing 
them — Annie for eyes and Josey to carry the books. 
It is toil, it is labor, but that is just what I have been 
longing for ever since the angels veiled down my eyes; 
and now I have not only something to do, but something 
to do that looks to beautiful results. 

But, sisters mine, how long I have had to wait for 
letters this time ! If not the usual notes that let you 
know every day exactly where I am, those containing 
something more than sweet words should surely have 
been acknowledged ere this. Anything appertaining to 
monnaied affairs can never be delayed without causing 
Worry or trouble to some one. Imagination is the white- 
winged angel of the soul by which we come quick to a 
knowledge of the wants or anxieties of others ; besides, 
my dear ones, never to cause others worry or care is only 
another way of doing them good. 

We are going this evening to hear Jenny Lind again ; 



92 THE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

and now I must tell you about my visit to her as I 
promised. Her suite of rooms extends to within a few 
doors of mine. Her little Swede page brought me her 
pretty card which you may be sure I was very proud to 
receive when every day so many hundreds are obliged to 
go away without the pleasure of even beholding her 
sweet face. She received me at the door^ and with that 
dear hand of hers that has dispensed good to so many 
led me to her "chair of country/' as she first called it, 
then quick : "No, my chair of state." It was made here 
in express compliment to the Queen of Song, a bower of 
satin and roses, rich enough for Victoria herself. Dear 
Jenny dropped down beside me and laying her soft hand 
upon mine, said low: "Come, dear, tell me all about 
it — ^how did you lose your sight? Vat made the light 
leave your eyes? It seems that you should see — you 
look so you do." 

"I do not know," I replied. "I had wept, perhaps, too 
long, and when at last I slept and awoke the day was 
no more." 

"Oh, Father of Light ! " she exclaimed, lifting up her 
white hands in pity and amazement. Then she contin- 
ued : "I have seen you pass through the hall many times 
and I vished to talk vith you — ^you look so cheerful 
alvays." 

I smiled, saying: "That is because I am always re- 
membering your song!" 

"Ah !" she exclaimed, "then you have heard me sing ? 
So you like music?" 

"Exceedingly," I replied. "Music is my morning, 
and I have never been quite so near heaven as when I 
went up on the wing of your 'Bird Song' at your first 
concert in New York. One note higher and I should 
have gone in !" 



QUEEN OF SONG. 93 

'^'Ha ! ha ?' she laughed. "Then you shall hear me 
sing so long as I sing in America. I vill send you and 
your little friend tickets, and my secretary shall bring 
you and take you home in my carriage, if you please, 
wherever I shall be." 

"Oh! thank you, thank you, dear Jenny Lind," I 
replied. "I could never have imagined such a favor !" 

"Oh! it is nothing at all — but excuse me one mo- 
ment,'' she said, running to meet some people who were 
entering. They were a mixed company, one Italian, 
two Germans, and an English gentleman and lady. She 
conversed with them all in their separate tongues with 
perfect ease. Then a party of French people were 
announced, with whom she was also perfectly at home, 
using their language as if it were her own. Then a 
Swedish servant girl entered. 

"Oh! excuse me again," said Jenny, "there comes 
one from my own country ;" and in a moment Jenny was 
kissing her and talking to her so earnestly. She desired 
her to remain, but the girl excused herself saying that 
her mistress would be expecting her at four o'clock. 

"Then you shall get excused to-morrow and come and 
spend the day vith me ; and I vill take you to my con- 
cert to-morrow evening." The girl could not speak, but 
Annie says she looked as though she had been invited 
to heaven. I rose several times to leave, but the dear 
queen laid her hand on my shoulder so affectionately, 
saying: "No, no! I vish to talk vith you more." 

At last a benign old gentleman, a doctor from near 
Boston, came and oh! how beautifully he introduced 
himself to Jenny Lind, telling her that he had come to 
interest her, if possible, in a little lame orphan girl 
whose musical powers astonish all who hear her. 

"You are very kind," said Jenny, "but I have so many 



94 THE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

and such constant demands that I cannot possibly at- 
tend to them all. I give so much to my secretary to 
distribute and so much to the Mayor of every city, and 
that is all I can dc." 

"Certainly/^ said the good doctor, "but a little saved 
from them and dropped into the lap of this little girl 
might give to the world another Jenny Lindf 

"But, I cannot give all avay. You do not give all 
avay — ^you keep something for yourself, I must keep 
something for myself." 

"Well, then," said the gentleman, "this little girl will 
have to go on playing with her kitten and mocking the 
birds." 

"ISTo, no," said dear Jenny, as if her whole mind had 
changed in a moment, "to-morrow — say nine o'clock — 
you shall bring the little girl and I vill hear her sing, 
and then I tell you vat I do." 

"Enough !" said the good doctor. "God bless you ! I 
will not detain you another moment." 

Jenny Lind kissed me good-bye, saying: 

*^I am coming to see you" — the angel ! and to-night 
we are to hear her sing. Annie is crazy with delight, 
but oh ! my darlings, vf ould I could seat you all in my 
place. You shall hear her next summer, though, when 
she comes to Rochester. 

The names on the trunks tell which ones they are for. 
The contents also are labelled for each and every one — 
the drab and blue for the heads of gold and the eyes 
01 blue, while the darker eyes will doubtless be equally 
well pleased. 

Ah ! here comes a letter in six parts, each signed by a 
name so dear that it is almost a letter of itself; even 
little brother has added his precious line at the margin. 
K'ow the skies may wear all their stars, the earth wreathe 



QVEEti OF SONG. 95 

herself in flowers, and I have in this letter love brighter 
and sweeter than they all. Oh ! but for these dear let- 
ters from far away I had no hope, no light, no love ; but 
in them I find dear embraces, soft white arms around my 
neck, joyous greetings and tearful kisses. Oh ! they are 
pictures of home, dear sweet home, where father and 
mother smile and all hope and love and pray. 

"Stone Cottage!" How that name turns even this 
palace-hotel to gloom! How mean all its grandeurs 
grow compared with that love-lighted and love-hal- 
lowed home! 

Father writes that since old Mr. A is gone, the 

son threatens to raise the rent on the house and the mill ; 
but I tell him that is perhaps the way the angels are 
taking to make him pull up his stakes and, like Abra- 
ham, go to pitch his tent amid larger and greener fields, 
and possibly have there a mill of his own. 

« 4e « ♦ 

To 

My Bisters, 

^ Allen Seminary, 
Rochester, N. Y. 



96 TEE FORESHADOWED WAY, 



CHAPTER XIII. 

ALL IMMORTALS. 



Boston, October, 1850. 

In" place of cloud and threatening rain the sun should 
have been shining even brighter than his wont on that 
glad morning when so many bright faces were quitting 
''Stone Cottage'^ again for school. Contradiction, 
though, runs in the veins of all things. The angels, 
even, smile while they weep, and doubtless sweet 
mother^s kisses were all dewy with tears, and father's 
smile as he lifted one after another into the old stage 
told as much of regret as of blessing and good-bye. But 
the sixteen miles' ride to the city, ending with the greet- 
ings of teachers, books, pianos, easels, and so on and so 
on, were doubtless enough to drown all from your young 
hearts save study, study, study. 

One of my letters from Dr. Bellows was to Mrs. 
George M. Lee, the lady who wrote "The Old Painters" 
that I send you. Josey, a little lad of fourteen that I 
brought from New York, delivered the letter with my 
card, and the same afternoon Mrs. Lee and her daughter 
called. I was out, but two days after she sent the sweet- 
est little note in the world, inviting me to pass the 
evening at her residence and bring my two little escorts, 
Annie and Josey. Mrs. Lee received me very affection- 
ately, pressed my hand and kissed me, I thought, with 
a tear on her cheek. Looking me full in the face she said : 



ALL IMMORTALS. 97 

"You are much younger than I supposed." Her 
sister, Mrs. Schuyler, of New York, Mrs. Bigelow and 
many other ladies and gentlemen were presented; then 
Mrs. Lee gave me her arm to a tete-d-Ute on the opposite 
side of the room. 

"Come over here with me," she said, "I am going to 
have you all to myself awhile. There ! you sit that side 
— my left ear is the best !" 

Mrs. Lee is a tall large lady, quite deaf but exceed- 
ingly cheerful and at timas buoyant, more like a lady 
of thirty than sixty. After a little she said to me: 

"You have Amin Bey, the Turkish Ambassador, stop- 
ping at your hotel?" 

"Yes," I replied, "and he is quite the star, he is so 
chivalrous, especially to the unmarried ladies." 

"Ha ! ha !" she laughed, "the sly dog ! I am coming 
to call on his Ambassadorship and make him give me the 
names of all his wives. Do you know how many he 
has?" 

"No," I replied, "though rumor says six; but the 
little xA.rmenian, his interpreter, affirms that he has 
only one, and he loves her so very dearly that if every 
ship does not bring him a letter he is moody for a 
week." 

Observing Annie and Josey sitting quiet she ran 
to them, saying: 

"Come here, my little friends. This is my cabinet, 
you see, where you will find curiosities enough to 
amuse you longer than one evening, for it has taken a 
pretty good long lifetime to gather them." 

Mrs. Schuyler and Mrs. Bigelow joined me. Feeling 
how little I had to entertain them with, I sought to 
maintain the part of listener, which is, though, by no 
means always the easiest part, for they who talk are 



98 THE FORESHADOWED WAT. 

at liberty to introduce whatever topics they please, 
when listening intelligently becomes much like allowing 
others to select your music, expecting you to play what- 
ever they are pleased to place before you. It is better 
then to talk at least one's own share of the time if only 
to keep the subjects within the range of one's own ac- 
quaintance. 

A large supper table was spread at which all were 
seated, Mrs. Lee's lovely daughter, Mrs. Bryant, at my 
right, and an elderly gentleman at my left, whose quaint 
remarks kept all around him laughing. Indeed, the 
whole party seemed more like a company of French peo- 
ple than sober Bostonians! All talked and all laughed 
till it was impossible to say who was gayest or most 
brilliant. Mrs. Lee undertook to tell me who were 
poets, who were orators, and who were authors, until 
finally she said : "I may as well dub them all immortals 
and let them go !" — to which the gentleman at my left 
added the story of an Irishman who, when told that the 
two busts before him were of Sir Isaac Newton and La- 
place, replied: 

"Och! sure, and myself was after toking them for 
greater men nor-r that !" You can imagine the laugh. 

After supper Mrs. Lee took me to pass a little time 
with her relics, which she handled and praised as if they 
were gifts of cherished friends. 

"They are all doubtless set around with many pleas- 
ant associations to you ?" I said. 

"Oh ! yes," she exclaimed ; "I gathered most of them 
while abroad years ago — some from the ruins of Etruria 
and ancient Eome." She then placed in my hand a little 
cup carved from the wood of a tree which Tasso planted, 
and another from a tree that grew on Olivet. 

The days fly swiftly m this "Eevere House" crowded 



ALL IMMORTALS. 99 

with visitors from every part of the land to hear Jenny 
Lind ; but not many had elapbcd before one evening the 
card of Mrs. George M. Lee v/as sent in. I was in the 
back parlor with a lovely little company of newly made 
acquaintances sitting around, and among them two of 
Mrs. Lee's friends, Mr. and Mrs. Buckingham, of Nor- 
wich. Seeing me seated with them she followed her 
card right along, and had hardly more than been pre- 
sented to the others when the Turkish Ambassador, 
Amin Bey, and his little Armenian interpreter entered 
the drawing-room, and nothing would do but she must 
make his acquaintance also. 

"Quick ! you know him," she said. "Call him this way 
— it will be the event of the season to speak to him. 1 
want to ask him how many wives he has !" 

With one's eyes that were a little thing to do, but with 
nothing visible but a glimmer of the gas above — ah! 
Still, seizing Annie's little hand I went quickly over to 
him and through the interpreter begging his pardon I 
said: 

"My friend, Mrs. Lee, a great authoress and who has 
travelled much in Asia and Europe, has been to Alex- 
andria and Egypt, Constantinople and to Jerusalem, 
the Holy Land, desires the pleasure of speaking with 
His Excellency, Sir Amin Bey; and she says she wants 
him to tell her truly what he has denied us all: how 
many wives he has" — which made the Bey almost laugh 
while he gave me his arm with real alacrity, the little 
Armenian keeping the other side, repeating so nearly 
instanter whatever was said that he seemed to hear it 
with his own ears. 

The Bey was acquainted with all the others present, 
and what a merry time we were having when Mr. 
Stevens, the proprietor of the hotel^ came in with Mayor 

LofC. 



100 ^^^ FORESHADOWED WAY^ 

Bigelow and two of the City Council who had been up to 
call on Jenny Lind and desired to-be presented to the 
blind authoress about w^hom and her little book the 
papers were saying so much. 

With this I send you a box of books addressed to 
Julia, but the books are to you all jointly. Love them, 
my dear sisters, for my sake and read them for your 
own. Their beauties no time can fade and their treas- 
ures no hand can steal. Lock them away then in your 
pure minds where, like diamonds, they will shine in their 
own light, and like pearls shed sweet lustre over all your 
lives. 

The largest and perhaps the most important volume 
is the "History of Kome'^ which, like a good genie, will 
transport you to its ancient streets, where your eyes may 
look on that wonder of the world, "St. Peter's," with 
its memories of centuries, whose very pavement is a 
study and every pillar and statue a marble poem; in 
whose spacious dome, too, fifteen hundred feet above 
the ground, the State House, of Boston, with its comers 
a little lopped off, might be twirled around as a boy rolls 
an apple in his hat ! Think of that, my dear ones, and 
you will not wonder at the traveller who pronounces it 
"the embodiment of all that man can do" — and the 
Coliseum, too, which you might think the heart of some 
groat mountain with its dirt washed away by the rains 
p^-td i+s rocky sides worn smooth by the hand of time. 
T^ideed, this genie hooTc will play the Corinne to you so 
delightfully that, like Moore, you will be almost unable 
^^ distinguish those places you have read about from 
ibose that you have really visited. One part I know will 
interest you — "the Thousand Galleries." But Rome is 
pltoorether a feast, a mighty banquet which the genius 
and power of man have been thousands of years pre- 



ALL IMMORTALS. IQl 

paring, and now this book invites you to its million 
courses of beauty and grandeur by spreading before you 
its never ending varieties of art and learned device. 

* ^ * iti 

To 

My Sisters, 

Allen Seminary, 
Rochester, N. Y, 



102 ' ^^E FORESHADOWED WAT. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



MY BETTER BAYS. 



Salem, November, 1850. 

You begged me to share with you whatever should 
afford me pleasure during my sojourn in "The Athens of 
America" as I did your father from the South; but 
chink the moments as I would, there was only time in 
Boston for Boston and the little books, over three thou- 
sand copies of which lie scattered among her beautiful 
homes. There I made my first deposit in the bank of 
three hundred dollars, a comer stone to my cottage 
unless some good angel come by night to dig it up, 
seeing it better that I should wander on, on, on, even 
as foreshadowed in that vision, now seven summers 
agone. 

We have just arrived at this little lonely hotel. Annie 
has been telling me how the setting sun is glowing upon 
the hills yonder, and now she is peeping about our new 
room. 

"Oh! cotton sheets!" she exclaims, "with the name, 
hotel. State and town all on just like a line of words in 
a spelling book. What a closet, too — deep as your hand 
— and such a little washstand with only two bits of 
towels! Oh! how dreary it is — I wish the fire would 
burn. And just listen to this bell card : ^erk it once 
gently, and if not answered immediately, yerk it agin." 
No schoolmasters in this place surely !" 



MY BETTER DATS. 103 

"Hung perhaps with the witches/' I suggested. A 
moment ago she closed the blinds and now she is open- 
ing them again. Now walking the floor talking half to 
herself and half to me: 

"Pray, what will Mr. B think of me? I saw 

him from the parlor window and he motioned that he 
was coming up; but just then that old porter there 
had to scream out : ^All aboard for the cars, not a min- 
ute to lose!' But that is the way with this world — 
alv/ays just escaping pleasure." 

Meantime, with all around as Annie has described it, 
with my feet on the fender and the fire muttering slowly, 
I have seized my card wherewith to write you. And 
ah ! in contrast to her mood, how the soul in me is hop- 
ing, hoping — hoping hopes whose beginnings, even, 
make glad assurance of their fruition. Still, all that in- 
spires is not hope, and all that teaches to endure is not 
courage. No, necessity is the lever that moves many, 
and necessity is evermore to move me while, like a sun- 
less planet, my heart goes on beating its rounds through 
the starless years counting each a century. 

In Boston your noble friend, Mr. William E. Deane, 
was all and ten thousand times more than all that you 
could possibly have imagined, the eloquence of his pen, 
even, hardly equalling the many other ways he had of 
winning favor for the little book and its author. When 
he called, I tried to retaliate upon your very flattering 
letter with praises of you; but his brilliant compli- 
ments to your ladyship soon made me blush for the at- 
tempt. Indeed, you are quite his ieau ideal of a woman 
— "fearlessly sincere" — "splendidly independent" — "so 
surprisingly intelligent" — as you surely are, love. I 
could hear others praise you forever, setting my best 
compliments for theirs to run up on. One thing he 



104 THE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

does not know : half liow nnselfisli you are. That is 
known only to those who live hy you and day by day 
watch your self-sacrifices and your efforts to turn glad- 
ness into the hearts of others and scatter comforts in 
their way. The blood of your noble ancestor, Sir Wil- 
liam Dean, must have struck an obstacle when it reached 
your toes and flowed backward filling all your soul with 
the purple tides of thought and feeling. 

Mr. William E. and Mr. Nicholas Dean are unlike 
and yet they are alike, and I am not surprised at their 
friendship for each other. At his last call he desired to 
be remembered to your dear self and the Duhe of Yo7'k, 
as he is wont to style your noble father. At his last 
visit, too, he left with me a package of letters which I 
am to have the pleasure of delivering here and from 
which you shall hear, my dear one, anon. 

Now ten days have elapsed since the above. One of 
your friend's letters was to the Eev. Dr. Thompson, 
who seemed to know at once a thousand ways in which 
he could serve me. 

"First," he said, "I must go and see the editors. They 
must notice your book beautifully, and to be sure that 
they do so I shall write the notices myself — ^ha ! ha!" 
Then seizing a pen he wrote the names of all the prin- 
cipal personages here, principal places, etc., directing 
Annie twenty times over where to find them ; then rang 
the bell and ordered the directory, and by its help gave 
us seemingly a key to the whole town and everybody 
in it. And when he had estimated about how many 
copies of "A Place in Thy Memory" would be taken here 
he positively rubbed his hands with delight at the bare 
idea of so many dollars lying snugly away in my purse. 
Ah! Dr. and Mrs. Thompson are such friends as one 
likes to meet in a strange place. Dr. and Mrs. Prince, 



MY BETTER DAYS. 105 

too, have been lovely ; but oh ! the ladies of Salem are 
all fully as pleasant as the gentlemen of Boston. For 
many of them there is no word but elegant! Some have 
been abroad, but intelligence and refinement make the 
light of all their homes. Annie says they are beautiful 
too. 

Among them, though, Mrs. Mayor Webb has been my 
good angel. Thanksgiving eve she called, and with her 
invitation to dine the next day with her and the Mayor 
and a few of their friends, she placed in my hands a 
beautiful pearl portemonnaie containing five gold eagles. 

"Ah!" I exclaimed, "have my better days indeed 
come like Job's when ^every one gave him also a piece 
of money and an earring of gold ?' " And when I 
would have kissed her and thanked her, she said : 

"Oh! no, not me. It is from my dear cousin, Mrs. 
Robinson" — whom I had not then so much as met. 

Oh! just think of it! Fifty dollars, all a present 
from one lady ! Would I could hang some new light in 
her sky and bend over her heart some promise of brighter 
joys ! But the memory of such a deed is itself a light, a 
lamp in the soul's temple that goeth not out. Like 
mine, her heart has been bereft. She has a lovely little 
son left to her, though, her bright eyes and fortune 
beside. 

Salem must have come from the oriental salutation 
"Salaam," safety or peace; and that it is so, is perhaps 
owing to its being so largely a woman's city, the men 
nearly all doing business in Boston and at home only at 
morn and at eve. 

In Boston I only called upon a few of the ladies, one of 
them a dear Mrs. Otis. After we came in Annie could 
not make the moneys answer to the number of books we 
had taken out until at last she exclaimed : 



106 THE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

^'Qih ! I know — that dear Mrs. Otis paid four quarters 
for hers, and I thought the edges of them did not look all 
alike ; and do you see ? — one of those four quarters was 
this gold piece that I cannot account for." 

"Oh ! then/' I said, "you must go back with it — it was 
a mistake." 

"No, no. She knew what she was doing, the sweet 

thing; and I wondered then at the droll smile on her 

face when she saw me shut the portemonnaie ; and I 

wondered, too, that she put them so deep down in instead 

of dropping them. But now I can see. It was all to 

keep me from knowing what she was doing.'' 

^ :^ ^ ^ 

To 

Mrs. Augusta Dean BucMey, 

Dunkirk, N. Y. 



A LONQ WAY YET. 107 



CHAPTEE XV. 

A LONG WAY YET. 

Portland, Me., December, 1850. 

Barred from all objects of sight, new places were of 
little avail to me but for the friends I meet. In one of 
his letters to a Boston minister Mr. Bellows said: 

"Mrs. De Kroyft wants few friends but many purchas- 
ers." Here, though, the purchasers have not only been 
many but the friends also, and ah! how like magic the 
little books have been disappearing among them ! Port- 
land is altogether a lively city. The people walk rapid- 
ly, drive fast and talk fluently, while from the abun- 
dance of their cordiality one would sooner think them 
from the far South than this far North. From New 
York to Portsmouth I often marvelled that so few of the 
comparatively rich kept a carriage. Here, though, no 
well-to-do establishment is without one, and if to dine or 
pass an evening scarce five blocks away you are sent for 
and set down at your hotel again. 

Your most gracious letter containing a note of intro- 
duction to the Hon. Wm. Appleton reached me a few 
days before my departure from Boston, but having 
previously presented him one from a Saratoga lady, I 
forbore favoring him with yours, dear Mrs. Shubrick, 
preferring rather to keep it as a memento of jour own 
beautiful friendship. 

How sad, how fearfully sad^ that our good President 



108 TEE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

is no more ! Washington must be desolate, indeed, 
with his departure echoing through all her borders. 
The last time I had the pleasure of speaking with His 
Excellency, it was to thank him for all the honors and 
kindnesses he had shown me during my stay in Wash- 
ington — and ah ! who that knew Zachary Taylor had 
not something to thank him for? 

En route from Charleston I went to make the long 
promised visit of a month with the Hardys, at their 
lovely place on the James opposite Norfolk. Three weeks 
passed in such a whirl of pleasure as to almost turn 
my night into day. Then Mrs. Hardy would have 
the publisher telegraphed for one hundred and fifty 
copies of "A Place in Thy Memory;" and one morn- 
ing ordering one hundred of them placed in the 
carriage, and taking sweet Minnie, her little Missy 
and myself in and telling the coachman where to stop, we 
crossed the river to one of the finest streets of residences 
in the city. Stopping as ordered, the footman came to 
the carriage door. 

"Here," she said, "take this with Missus' card, ring 
the bell and hand it in, and say that Missus will be back 
in about an hour for the little book or the pay, one 
dollar." Then the next and the next, some following 
the boy right back, taking two, three or five until fifty 
of the books were gone ; and then crossing the street and 
coming down on the opposite side did the same until 
fifty more were gone. 

"There now," she said, "we will begin to collect;" 
and crossing back to where we left the first one, the 
footman had hardly rung when the lady opened the 
door and came down to the carriage herself with 
the money in her hand. Nothing would do, though, 
but we must go up and have refreshments, as many of 



A LONG WAY YET. 109 

the others had invited us to do. Cake, coffee and wine 
were served, and what a cheery, bright httle visit we had, 
ending with her promise to come with her husband and 
dine and pass the next evening at "Kiverside/"' So on 
we went, not one handing back the book in place of the 
money until the whole hundred dollars had been col- 
lected. 

At the residence of one dear old lady who is very deaf 
we all alighted, Mrs. Hardy having promised to bring 
me there. Entering the large parlor adjoining her 
boudoir Mrs. Hardy was leading me over to a seat near 
the bow window when she exclaimed: 

"Ah ! there is your little book now lying on the dear 
old lady's table." Taking it up and turning the leaves 
she added: 

"Well, this is a tribute indeed ! Hardly a page that 
is not marked and lined over and over ! If Cowper 
thought it fame to find a worn copy of his poems in a 
cotter's window, what would he think of this, and from 
one too whose education was not only finished in Europe 
but who has since solaced a long life with the best litera- 
ture of three languages beside her own ?" 

No one knows the faults of that little volume better 
than I do, and I was wondering what such a mind could 
possibly have found in it to admire when the heavy doors 
rolled back and the Madam entered supported by the 
willing slave who, after travelling with her mistress 
over many lands returned and has since been ears to her 
through many years, and now at last a staff to the feet 
that move too slowly. Turning to approach her Mrs. 
Hardy said low: 

"Oh ! the majesty of that white head, and I do wish" — 
The Madam's cordial welcome stayed the rest while her 
first word gave me not only the direcjtion of her face 



110 TEE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

but her height also, which so relieved the awkwardness 
of being presented without the eyes that, after pressing 
a kiss warm and loving upon my lips and drawing me 
down beside her upon the sofa, she said : 

"Why, with what marvelous ease you carry your blind- 



ness 



1'^ 



"That is all owing to my queenly escort," I replied, re- 
ferring to Mrs. Hardy. "Overshadowed by her wing one 
could hardly help moving with ease." 

"Ah!" she said, as if she had understood me — "and 
you have put such loveliness too into the lips of mis- 
fortune and made sorrow beautiful by clothing it in the 
light of another world." 

"That is so," Mrs. Hardy responded leaning near, 
"and taught the world how to suffer while giving pleas- 
ure to others." 

"Yes indeed," Madam said, "and as no one else has 
ever done, I think, naming tears even — bitter tears — 
^the impearled dews of feeling gathered around a sor- 
rowed heart.' And again : ^Dews of the night are dia- 
monds at morn, so the tears we weep here may be pearls 
in heaven.' My niece in Washington," she continued, 
"sent me your little work last winter, and it has been 
my constant companion until I nearly know it by 
heart." So talking along, suddenly she stopped and 
laying her hand on my arm she said feelingly : 

^^hile I would give the world to listen I do all the 
talking myself, as my dear Mrs. Hardy here knows, 
just to save you the trouble of screaming to my deaf 
ears." Then pressing my lips close to the ear next me, 
I said not over loud but distinctly: 

"It is not so hard, I fancy, to have the walls to the 
house one lives in grow thick as to have all the windows 
to it darkened." 



A LONG WAY YET, HI 

'^No, no," she replied, laughing, "but both are so 
hard that one may well doubt which is the harder." 

She knew what we were abroad for that day, and after 
a little said: 

"But I must not keep you longer. I want twelve 
copies of your sweet Tlace in Thy Memory' — one for 
each of my grandchildren." The maid called the foot- 
man and Mrs. Hardy told him to bring twelve copies of 
the little book from the carriage. But the wooley 
Archimedes, reduced to "Kim," was too astray in his 
mathematics that day to count correctly, and brought 
fifteen instead. 

"Oh! that is all right," Madam exclaimed, "one for 
each of my three great-grand boys, three cousins, who 
have no grandparents and are coming to pass their 
first college vacation with their great-grandmama. The 
dear fellows ! I had nearly forgotten them." 

This reminded sweet Missy of a joy shut up in her 
little heart, and running to the Madam's side she scream- 
ed : "George and Tom are coming home then too, when 
their University is out." 

"The dear lamb !" the Madam said, stooping to kiss 
the bright face. Then after the ladies had exchanged 
some words about the schools as to which has the best mil- 
itary drill, etc., the Madam, turning to me, remarked: 

"I see by your book that you write with your own hand 
and I want you to put your name in each one of these 
for me. Can you without the card you speak of?" 

"Oh! yes," I said, "if you have a rule or anything 
to place across the top of the page for me to write 
against." She had no rule, but using a table knife 
instead, I wrote my lengthy name for her in the whole 
fifteen as best I could. The pay was a twenty-dollar 
gold piece, and no change would be thought of. Thea 



112 TEE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

with embraces cordial and words beautiful to remember 
we parted. Descending the steps I was repeating this 
from her lips : 

"The stay has been long, but one in heaven is always 
awaiting my coming and you haVe that comfort also/^ 
I was repeating it in my thoughts, but as if to explain 
Mrs. Hardy said : 

"Up these very steps long years ago, in the prime of 
his life, her husband was borne a corpse, killed in a 
duel." 

The next morning taking the remaining fifty, minus 
the ten Mrs. Hardy would keep for herself, we did the 
same as with the hundred, only driving to residences 
more scattering or more remote, just wherever Mrs. 
Hardy's circle of friends chanced to extend, which as I 
told her seemed to embrace the whole city. 

Ah ! how like you, dear Mrs. Shubrick, all that was — 
always taking away with you in the bottom of your car- 
riage a package of the little books. Pray what did you 
do with them, or may none but you and the angels ever 
know? And how lovely of you now every time you 
drive to be looking for a little home for me somewhere 
in or around Washington. To be so near you were 
happiness, indeed, but I have a long, long way yet to 
wander, and very, very much to achieve ere they who 
watch in heaven will see it good for me to settle down 
to so much of rest and so much of pleasure. 

I am sorry to hear that your dear eyes trouble you, 
but now that the good Commodore has come home from 
far over the sea and you have ceased watching and wait- 
ing, they will doubtless mend as the heart does when 
bathed in the smiles of those whom we love. 

You did not come to Saratoga this summer as you 
thought. I went to sip from its Mohegan wells for a 



A LONG WAY YET, 113 

week, and it would have islanded all my clouds with 
light to have found you and the good Commodore there, 
Dr. and Mrs. Clymer and their dear little May. 

The morning before 1 loft New York, the Commer- 
cial Advertiser had in it a lovely notice of my journey 
South ending with the President's letter ; and that even- 
ing when I went on board the steamer, the captain 
recognized me and my little party at once. Giving me 
his arm to the ladies' cabin, I announced to him where 
I was going and introduced to him my two little escorts, 
Annie in the place of Minnie who had left me for a 
time, and the lad Josey who, fearing lest his office had 
not been fully understood by the Captain, said for him- 
self: 

"I look after the baggage, sir, and run the errands." 

"Ha! ha!" the Captain laughed; "then you are the 
little courier !" Very soon we received tickets for state- 
room, meals, etc., with the most gallant commands of 
Captain Turrey to fear nothing, make ourselves perfectly 
at home. 

In the morning at Troy we went up to the hotel, and 
how its worthy proprietor came to know me is more than 
I can imagine unless by the paper the same as the Cap- 
tain; but when we had all breakfasted he came and 
asked if I were not the authoress of "A Place in Thy 
Memory," and begged the favor of a copy, complaining 
that he had not been able to find it in the book-stores. 

"No," I said, "I took it from the trade soon after 
it appeared, the better to introduce it myself." I prom- 
ised to send him one for which he readily gave me the 
money and the address, reading it himself : "Mr. Cole- 
man, proprietor of the house," adding very modestly : 

"Your bill, m^adam, is all settled, and we shall be most 
happy to see you here whenever you will be pleased to 



114 TBE FORESHADOWED WAT. 

come this way." If one have not honors to bestow nor 
favors to impart, the next best thing is to be their 
grateful recipient ; and what could I do but thank him 
since as I once heard a sweet Quakeress say : 

"Kindness, kindly bestowed, is the Lord's blessing, 
and no one can afford to turn it away." 

In the parlor Dr. Guy, of Brooklyn, introduced him- 
self and lady, took us under his escort to the depot 
where he asked to be excused a moment, ran up to the 
Superintendent's Office and returned with a Compli- 
mentary for myself and little party to Saratoga and 
back again. In the car he arranged the seats so that 
Annie and I sat opposite them, and lost in conversation 
the two hours sped like a dream pleasant to remember. 
They have a cottage at Saratoga to which their carriage 
had preceded them, and it meeting them at the depot 
the Doctor would have us all get in. I stopped at Union 
Hall whose proprietor, you remember, not long ago fell 
dead while preparing for church. Toward evening I 
sent for Mrs. Putnam, the landlady, and introducing 
myself to her engaged my room and Josey's little one 
off for a week. After tea in the drawing-room she 
presented me to many of the ladies, and very soon I came 
to know them all and many of the gentlemen. 

One evening Mr. Mann, of New York, made me ac- 
quainted with his friend. Colonel Walworth of Arkansas ; 
and oh ! imagine my surprise when, dropping his hand 
tenderly upon my shoulder he exclaimed: "I, too, my 
child, am forever in the dark. The long gloomy way 
that you have just entered upon I have been travelling 
more years than you have lived even." And how I 
pitied him ! Meeting Mr. Mann again, though, he said : 

"My friend, the Colonel, is not only one of the richest 
men in all the South but one of the saddest." 



A LO^Q WAY TET. 115 

'^Ah! that is it/' I replied. "He has nothing to do 
but mourn his privation." 

"Yes," Mr. Mann said, "his fortune is I is burden !" 

"And could he not be persuaded to div^.de it up, 
then?" I asked. "Almost any one would be willing to 
carry a part of it for him !" 

"Oh, no," he laughed; "that is not in his creed. 
Up at the Chancellors, though, the other evening he 
gave a young lady who chanced to play and sing very 
much to his pleasure a diamond ring." 

So, making new acquaintances, occasionally reviv- 
ing one from the beautiful long ago and profiting not 
a little by the Congress waters, the week passed, and 
sending for my bill I had only fifteen dollars to pay, 
five dollars apiece. Descending the river, too. Captain 
Turrey was just as kind and polite as before. 

But oh ! will the world be always like that ? Ah ! 
no, no, my dear friend. This is but a little sunny 
opening to the long rough weary way, long since fore- 
shadowed to my soul. 

* ♦ * * 

To 

Mrs. Commodore Shubrick, 

Washington, D, C, 



110 THE FORESHADOWED WAY. 



CHAPTEK XVI. 

HIS VENERABLE HEAD. 

Richmond, Va., February, 1851. 

One more city has been besieged and taken. In 
other words: One more city has turned back her 
gates to let the little book and its author pass in! 
But a thousand more will have done the same, and 
many long, long years of wanderings have been lived 
through, ere my heart lose its memory of Mrs. Gen- 
eral Ashley and all the brilliant scenes to which her 
jewelled hand has been to me the ''Open Sesame/' 
Indeed, since that evening at the National when 
your star first shone upon my darkness, I have been 
so blessed by your love and your friendship that it 
eeems I should have been most unfortunate but for my 
misfortunes. Please let me thank you here also, dear 
Mrs. Ashley, for that very kind introduction to the 
Hon. Mr. Holmes of South Carolina, who did so mucK 
to make that last evening of mine in Washington 
pleasant. Captain Graham, too, was very attentive, 
and the Hon. Mr. Schenck, Colonel May, etc., etc. 
Toward the close of the evening I had a little prome- 
nade with General Scott, and referring to his visit 
to the Institution in New York, he said: 

"So in your book you have put me down to tKe 
New World what Saul was to the old: ^Head and 
shoulders above all other men' — ^hal ha! The unMnd- 



EI8 VENERABLE HEAD, 117 

est cut of all, though, was to turn all our soldierly 
thanks into ridicule by quoting at us: 'God takes no 
thanks for murder.' " He introduced me to his daugh- 
ter and spoke of calling; but how sorry I was to tell 
him that I was to leave in the morning for Richmond. 
In the refreshment room Governor Houston as- 
sured me that he should certainly sit up two hours 
after he returned home writing letters for me to his 
friends in Charleston, New Orleans and Texas— as he 
did, and the secretary brought them in the morning. 

With her sweet good-night, dear Mrs. Paine trans- 
ferred from her bosom to mine, by Mr. Clay's request, 
a beautiful cross of his hair, he having allowed her to 
clip from his venerable head the gray threads for an- 
other; and as you can imagine, I was sorry not to see 
him again before leaving Washington, and more es- 
pecially, too, as he expressed a wish to charge me with 
a letter to his friend, Mr. Downs of New Orleans. 
Colonel Paine accompanied me home. He tried sev- 
eral times to make his way through the crowd that I 
might have the sad pleasure of bidding you, my dear 
friend, good-night and good-bye, but finally said he 
would embrace the earliest opportunity of doing so 
for me, and present also my warmest thanks for the 
great pleasure of the evening. 

Of all the sweet letters to your Eichmond friends 
I delivered the one to Mrs. Colonel Payton first, and 
had the pleasure of a call from her and her daughter 
that very afternoon. To dear Mrs. Mason, though, I 
am most largely indebted for hospitality. Her first 
good office was an invitation for myself and my little 
Annie to her party given in honor of the members of 
the State Convention, of which you know the Judge 
is President, Miss Ellen Scott was one of the brilliant 



118 



TBE FORESHADOWED WAY. 



company, and to say how much I owe her were to say 
how much I am indebted to the friend whose letter 
gained me her acquaintance. Mr. and Mrs. Gallaher, 
also, have been more devout and beautiful in their at- 
tentions than I have words to tell you — visits, parties, 
and helps in every way. 

The honorable gentlemen of the Capitol have been 
exceedingly gracious — the Members and Senators all 
subscribed for copies. One day when a distinguished 
speaker of the Legislature had the floor, Mr. Imboden, 
who had gathered all their names, came over to where 
Annie and I were sitting with some ladies from the 
hotel and suggested that it would be a good time to de- 
liver the books, as they were all present. Annie went 
out and sent the hotel porter to the express office for 
the books, who stopped with them in the hall by the 
door. Then Mr. Imboden gave a page the list, and he 
went around leaving one on each desk. In a few 
moments every honorable gentleman present had a 
red gilt book in his hand reading while the compla- 
cent speaker, still in the height of his argument with 
the perspiration rolling down his face, looked across 
at his worthy colleague, Mr. Imboden, then down at 
the little book on his own desk, smiled and went on 
with his speech. 

Look at that, dear Mrs. Ashley ! Was ever forbear- 
ance so beautiful ? Why ! it was enough to immortalize 
the speaker's oration, whatever it was, and make old 
Virginia herself giddy with pride for having given to 
the world such a company of gentlemen. 

The next morning, though, Judge Mason, President 
of the State Convention, crowned all with his lofty 
indulgence — called the House to order, introduced the 
little book;, breaking over it and the author much 



EI 8 VENERABLE HEAD. II9 

praise, and then stayed proceedings while the pages 
went around and took the names of all those who wou]d 
subscribe for a copy, and not one refused. That even- 
ing he sent me the list, headed by himself, with a note 
proposing to have the books there the next morning at 
the opening of the Convention, that the pages miglit 
deliver them. 

Your gallant friend, Colonel Mitchell, has called 
several times, always inquiring how best he can serve 
me. He says when I come to St. Louis he will have 
the widest gate of the city open to receive me. The 
Cincinnati Enquirer, too, after copying the Presi- 
dent's beautiful letter, adds: 

"If Mrs. De Kroyft should come West we do not 
hesitate to predict for her such a reception even as the 
late noble hearted President had in view of the South 
when he wrote: *I gladly bespeak for you the friendly 
offices of the proverbially generous and hospitable 
community which you propose to visit.^ ^' 

So the hands that beckon point me forever away, 
away, away. Meantime, the letters that I brought to 
Governor Floyd from Washington have secured me 
three lovely ones from him to South Carolina — one to 
the Governor, one to the President of Columbia Col- 
lege, and one to Colonel Wade Hampton. 

My dear gentle friend, please excuse my letter which 
is far too long except for expressing my never ceasing 
gratitude to my most kind and most beloved friend, 
Mrs. General Ashley of Washington, D. C. 

« * 4t « 

To 
Mrs. General Ashley, 

Washingtonj D. C. 



120 THE FORESHADOWED WAY. 



CHAPTER XVIL 



AN" ABSENT STAR. 



Augusta, Ga., April, 1851. 
After having illumined all Boston for me with your 
beautiful letters, and done not a little to light up 
Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington with them, 
it seems fitting that I write you, dear Mr. Bellows, if 
only to tell you what particular stars have burned and 
blazed brightest in my way. But first let me explain 
how it is that my letter comes to you this morning in 
ink instead of with creased paper and pencil as here- 
tofore. While in Boston I met Mr. Prescott, the his- 
torian; and describing to him the card with which 
I had written my first little work, he told me that not 
seeing sufficiently to guide his hand he had invented 
a case of wires for keeping the lines straight, and used 
the manifold writing paper and an agate point in place 
of pen and ink. Afterward I was at his house, and 
seated in his chair before the desk by which he had 
written all his great works I found that I could write 
with his case readily, but never dreamed of possessing 
such a cunning little classic device. Imagine my sur- 
prise, then, when among the brightest Christmas things 
Santa Claus brought me was a case exactly like his, 
inked paper, agate point and all. So if your much- 
used eyes find this letter more legible than my last, it is 
to Mr. Prescott that jou aje indebted instead of to me^ 



AN ABSENT STAB. 121 

In the thee and tliou city the editors seemed to have 
had their notices all prepared before my coming, so 
quickly they were out. Then one very cold day, calling 
along Front Street, I came to the counting-room of a 
gentleman with the frost of many winters on his head, 
but the warmth of many summers in his heart. He 
took one of the little books, just then out in Christ- 
mas attire, and wrote his name for it so kindly that it 
seemed a little rivulet of light across the page. The 
next day evening brought the venerable gentleman and 
his two lovely daughters to see me — and how kindly 
he held my hand and praised the little book! 

"We have all moistened our eyes over it,'^ he said, 
"and I must have twenty copies for my friends." 
Then twenty other copies were called for, then twenty 
others. Then while at Baltimore I received an order 
for one hundred copies, and at Charleston an order 
for one hundred more, which at $1.50 each, made the 
pretty sum of $390, for which I am here in receipt of 
a little bank book to that amount. In answer to my 
entreaties to know what he could possibly be doing 
with so many of the little books when it seemed that 
everybody there had taken one of me : 

"Why, my child," he wrote, "I make every gentle- 
man who calls at my office take one away with him, and 
every friend whom I shake hands with on the street 
I make do the same ; and that is what I am doing with 
them." 

"Ah! Mr. Bellows, how impossible ever to repay 
such a love labor as that ! How write it, too, how de- 
scribe it, and more than all, how receive it? Indeed, 
the name of Dr. George H. Burgin of Philadelphia 
seems to me evermore a mark on the world to lollow 
goodness bj. 



122 THE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

But I must tell you of my second visit to Washing- 
ton. All the friends to whom I had letters had called, 
and one morning, having been out sometime returning 
them, coming in I found General Duff Greene and 
daughter waiting. After a little the General said: 

"Let us see ! You would like to go to the Presi- 
dent's levee to-night, and as that is one of the places 
where a gentleman is indispensable, my son, Colonel 
Ben, must be your escort. However, you must come 
and take tea with us and we will arrange it then." 

Notwithstanding the father and sister were so posi- 
tive of Colonel Ben's willingness to see me to the 
President's levee, it was not without some misgivings 
as to his pleasure in the matter that I dressed and went 
to the tea. Aside from the idea of escorting a lady 
with veiled eyes to such an assembly, having been on 
General Taylor's staff through all the Mexican cam- 
paign, and one of the many who helped to bear him 
away, I feared lest the Colonel might feel some repug- 
nance at so soon going there to attend his successor's 
levee. Still, when at the table Miss Lizzie introduced 
it again, and the proud mother had bent an approving 
smile upon her son, turning to me he said cordially : 

"Certainly, madam. If only to imitate the least of 
those ^friendly offices' that my gallant old leader be- 
spoke for you among his friends in the South, I shall 
claim the honor of presenting you to the President 
this evening." 

Accordingly, about nine we were set down at the 
Executive Mansion. As I had no maid, hoods, wraps, 
etc., were trusted to the mercy of the crowd, as is the 
way. "We entered the Blue Eoom, where we stood 
awhile. Colonel Ben sketching the passers-in and the 
passers-out 



AN ABSENT STAB. 123 

"You would be a splendid Corinne/' I said, "to ex- 
plore the world with; but tell me, please, how Mr. 
Fillmore, the President, is looking/' 

"Oh! of course, like a man born to be a President," 
he replied, "as he always does." 

Twenty couples passed on, then the Colonel presented 
me. Extending my hand, I said: 

"I am very happy, indeed, to meet the President, 
although it is not my pleasure to see him." 

"But we are very happy, indeed, to see you," he re- 
plied, pressing my hand cordially; "and I regret that 
Mrs. Fillmore is not present. Unfortunately, she is 
suffering from a severe cold." We were then presented 
to Miss Fillmore, standing by a table a few steps from 
her father. She seemed very much at ease with the 
honors of the White House and I hear every one speak- 
ing in her praise. 

Passing on to the East Eoom, Colonel Ben express- 
ing some surprise at the President's very cordial re- 
ception of me, I said : 

"Oh! when he was Vice-President I waited on him 
with the little book and he declined taking one — said 
he never bought any books. So, Christmas, when he had 
come to be President, I had the assurance to send him 
a copy, and received from His Excellency in return 
the loveliest note imaginable with all the compliments 
and good wishes of the season." 

"Ah! that is it!" he exclaimed. 

Entering the East Eoom we first met Mr. and Mrs. 
Upham of Vermont; next, my dear noble friend, Mrs. 
Bell and her party. 

"Oh!" she said, "so we meet here again, but no 
President Taylor!" 

"No," I replied; "but though dead he still liveth. 



124 TEE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

Indeed, at every turn I am reminded of his gracious 
auspices, and especially here.'' 

Next we met your friends, Senator and Mrs. Grin- 
nell, and Miss Anna C. Lynch, who happens to be no 
less a favorite with my cavalero chaperon than with you. 
Miss Lynch introduced me to Howard Payne, "author 
of the world's 'Sweet Home.' " 

"Yes," he replied sadly, "but who has never yet had 
a home of his own." 

\yhile we were talking Mr. Stevens, the traveller, 
came up. 

"Oh ! here you are, Payne !" he exclaimed. "I have 
been looking for you this half hour" — to which the 
poet made answer: 

"Then you should be all the more glad to see me." 

"As, doubtless, Mr. Stevens was," I said, "when at 
last he discovered the capital of Guatemala." 

"Ha ! ha !" he laughed, as though in the instant 
he had lived over again all the long search he 
describes. 

Later in the evening we m.et Mrs. Commodore Aulick, 
to whom I had already presented my letter and passed 
a delightful evening at her house. The Commodore 
was to sail the next day, and a party of his officer 
friends and their ladies were at the dinner. This even- 
ing Mrs. Aulick was accompanied by her son, who was 
the first surveyor of the river Jordan, Colonel Ben 
says, and made all those beautiful drawings of the Holy 
Land in "The Dead Sea Expedition." 

A day or two after the levee, by special invitation, 
I had the pleasure of a little visit with Mrs. Fillmore 
and her daughter in their private parlor; and almost 
the first thing Mrs. Fillmore said was : 

"Oh! that precious little volume that you sent the 



AN ABSENT STAR, 125 

President I have had the misfortune to have taken 
from my table. I laid it down to answer a card, and 
when I came back it was gone." 

"Ah V I said, "then I may hope to have the pleasure 
of presenting Mrs. Fillmore another !'^ 

"No, no," she replied. "I want a dozen of them 
to send to my friends in western New York and 
Ohio." 

Before leaving Washington I attended an afternoon 
informal reception at the White House, and meeting 
the President again, I said: 

"Excuse one shadow, please, if only for contrast to 
all your splendors." 

"Wait !" he replied, still retaining my hand. "No 
picture is perfect without its shadows; and all artists 
agree, I believe, in pronouncing them the most difficult 
part to paint !" 

Ah! Mr. Bellows, were you ever overwhelmed like 
that with nothing in the world to say but thanks ? 

It was an informal reception, as I have said, and Mrs. 
Fillmore would have me seated by her; and while at 
her side Madam Callibrand and Lady Bulwer entered 
whom I had previously met at their receptions. Part- 
ing, Lady Bulwer said to me low : 

"If you will call again. Sir Henry will give you a 
letter to the British Consul in Charleston." 

The morning I waited upon their highnesses with 
your letter. Sir Henry asked if I had ever tried mes- 
merism or animal magnetism for my eyes. Said he 
knew a person in England who had been restored by it 
after being without sight many years. 

Charleston, I believe, is always delightful, and I left 
it this time with even more regret than before. Among 
the supremest of its pleasures Mrs. Colonel Isaac Hayne 



126 THE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

called one morning and invited me to pass the coming 
evening at her house. 

"Only a few will be there" she said, but suggested 
that I wear the same dress as at Mrs. Gadsden's party — 
crepe, and lisse ruches. At an early hour the carriage 
came for us with her nephew for escort. Mrs. Hayne 
joined me in the reception chamber and gave me 
her arm to the drawing-room. On the way she said 
low: 

"I have invited His Excellency Governor Means and 
his lady to meet you this evening." 

"Oh ! thank you, Mrs. Hayne," I replied. "That is 
beautiful of you, but why did you not tell me ?" 

"Lest you might put yourself to some extra expense 
or trouble," she answered, half laughing. Then in a 
few words she described Mrs. Means' general appear- 
ance, her dress, etc. At the entrance, without stopping, 
she whispered: 

"Mrs. Means and sister are in the corner yonder, and 
we will join them there." 

Mrs. Means expressed herself delighted to see me, 
and I replied : 

"It gives me great pleasure to meet Mrs. Means, and 
I should regret the more not being able to see her had 
I not just heard her described so beautifully." This 
caused a little rustling laugh and turned all eyes to 
Mrs. Hayne, who took a seat by me while her sister and 
Mrs. Means resumed their conversation, which I soon 
saw was about Secession. 

"The Governor and the Colonel are talking in the 
other parlor," Mrs. Hayne said, "and they will come 
here soon." Meantime I was wondering what to say 
when presented. Then I heard their voices rise and 
knew that they were coming. 



AS ABSENT STAB. 127 

The Colonel approached, announced himself, and then 
presented His Excellency Governor Means. Giving him 

my hand, I said: , • -, , +„ Tv,r,pt 

"I am very happy and very proud, indeed, to mcti 

His Excellency Governor Means, and the more as it 

gtes me an opportunity of thanking South Carolina 

pmona% for all her beautiful hospitalities. 
"Ha! ha!" the Governor laughed, and turning to the 

Colonel, he said • , 

"South Carolina and I have always been pretty gooc 
friends, but we were never before mistaken the one to. 
the other, I imagine." . 

Mrs Hayne and the Colonel went to receive othei 
guests, and seated again by Mrs. Means she remarked : 

"Miss Trapier and I were discussing Secession, which 
is doubtless of not much interest to you " 

"No" I replied, "since in my State that pretty word 
is always considered the next thing to treason." 

"Which is your State, madam?" asked the Governor. 

"New York," I answered. 

"Ah!" said Mrs. Means. "Then you are not quite a 

^^n5' I said, "although my Quaker ancestors of 1630 
first settled in Massachusetts." I then told the Gov- 
ernor of my letter to him from His Excellency Governs 
Floyd of Virginia, which I had anticipated the honor 

of presenting at Columbia, the '^-P^^l'/^'f °"Vw de 
President of the College and also one to Colonel Wade 
Hampton, which turned the conversation to Richmond, 
the State Convention, Judge Mason, Governor Floyd, 
etc until dinner was announced and served m a way to 
make one at least doubt if hospitality has ever had such 
another home in the world. Then Miss Hattie favored 
the company with music in which others gomed. 



128 TEE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

Bishop Gadsden and one other minister, to whom I 
had letters from Dr. Turner of New York, were present, 
but I saw far less of them than of the Governor, who 
was talking with me when wines were brought in. 
Speaking of the negro population generally, he re- 
marked : 

"I believe them the best fed, the best clothed, and in 
every respect the best cared for and the happiest peas- 
antry in the v/orld'' — and judging from his account of 
his own plantation, I should think they might be. One 
little instance he related amused me exceedingly : Eight 
or ten negroes were engaged ditching a piece of ground, 
and one evening the Governor, coming along and seeing 
how little they had done, said to them rather reprov- 
ingly that he could get a white man to come there and 
dig, who would accomplish more in a day than the whole 
of them together. 

"Oh, well, Massa," replied one, "dis make de difference 
— he hab to work for his livm." 

Governor Means is very popular with his people, al- 
though so democratic that his aides complain at his 
not having a private room with them on review days in- 
stead of sitting at the public table. 

South Carolina is verily the Italy of America, and 
Charleston her Eome minus ruins, stained altars, and 
rivers running with blood. Secession, though, they say, 
is talked of all over the State, a double tax ordered, 
manufactories going up, magazines placed in the citadel 
square, the Governor examining the arsenals and re- 
viewing his military forces ; and who shall say but our 
constellation may yet be left, like the beautiful Plei- 
ades, to mourn evermore an absent star? 

Augusta seems the entrance city to some beautiful 
orient — so unlike anything we have in the North. Broad 



AN ABSENT STAR. 129 

Street has two rows of large trees througli the center, 
the branches forming an arch over a grassy walk, with 
a road on either side wide enough for two carriages to 
drive abreast; and beside that a broad shaded walk on 
each side of the street. 

If possible, the editors here have been more lavish m 
their praise of the little book and "the heroism of the 
author'^ than in any other city. The second day aftei 
receiving a copy their notices all came out, each an- 
nouncing that "the author gives the gentlemen the pref- 
erence in her canvassatory calls." The next day— how 
it rained! And the next and the next. Then they all 
had a notice again, each with something new as if to 
keep up the interest a little until the rain should cease. 
Still it rained and rained every day as if a new flood 
might have set in, and each day some new notice ap- 
peared, sometimes quoting from the little book or from 
the New York, Boston or Charleston editors. 

At last the sun rose as bright and clear as if all the 
predictions of the late dear Mrs. Dawson for me in her 
own sunny State were coming to pass. I had brought 
only ninety copies of the little book to Augusta, judging 
by the size of it that would suffice. The landlady let 
me have a bright mulatto boy to carry them, and begin- 
ning at a bank the President headed the list for three 
copies, and with the other officers seven more were taken 
there— ten in all. The next place was a large store, and 
before we left it seemed that all the gentlemen in the 
block had congregated there, coming and going, and 
every one of them took copies. The owner of the store 
led off with five, and passing the pen to the others they 
all wrote their names— some for one, some for two, three 
and even five copies. And if you believe it, we had only 
stopped at a dozen or so more places when the whole 



X30 TSB FORESHADOWED WAT, 

ninety books were gone, and we were back at the hotel 

again before noon. 

Dear Mr. Bellows, do the angels help, or does the Lord 

indeed put out His blessed Hand to lead and prosper the 

way? 

* * * * 

To 
Rev, Dr. Bellows, 

New York. 






HOW BOf 131 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

HOW SO? 

Providence, E. I., October, 1851. 

Late in the summer of 1803 Deacon Philip Potter and 
his queenly wife, Anna Hart Potter, with their darling 
little blue-eyed Melintha between them, paused in the 
vestibule of the old Baptist Church here to exchange 
farewells and mingle their parting tears with all whom 
they held dear, as early on the morrow they were to 
commence their long, weary journey to the — then 
styled — Ontario country by way of New York and Al- 
bany. A dear little party, they, and a very important 
one to us — no less than our revered grandparents, now 
both over ninety, and their darling little Melintha, then 
just able to walk, our own precious mother, we her 
daughters nine with one little brother. Yesterday, in 
honor of that sad Sunday in the long, long ago, I made 
a pilgrimage to the dear old church that is now not only 
the church of the present Governor and his family, but 
also of all the Brown University professors, they say, 
from the President down. 

But to go back a little ! En route from Augusta I 
stopped at Wilmington, N. C, the city of Mrs. Dr. De 
Rozet, whose acquaintance I made while at the "Revere 
House" in Boston a year ago; and now little more was 
needed than her favor to set all the principal doors of 
the city ajar for the little books. Many, many of the 



132 THE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

ladies, too, came for them or sent their servants with 
"Missus' card." Often before v/e were dressed, our 
room being on the ground floor, a tray with a bouquet 
and some little delicacy was passed in at the window, 
oftenest from one dear Mrs. Osborne there, whose angel 
mother we met in Georgia. 

Creeping northward we stopped next at Wilmington, 
Del., a charming little city, and nothing but pleas- 
ant things came to us there — first, a dear editor whom 
we found turning his printing press by hand and so 
literally grinding out his weekly paper, every letter of 
the type to which he had set up himself. He was one 
of General Scott's aides either in the Indian or Mexican 
war; but when his notice of the little book came out it 
was classic and beautiful enough, I told him, to have 
been written by Addison for The Spectator. 

We were indebted to him and his wife also for calls, 
a pleasant entertainment at their house and a long, 
lovely drive by Federal Hill, which, he said, missed 
being the site of the Nation's Capital in place of Wash- 
ington only by a single vote. 

The next pleasant thing was the way the little books 
were taken there, day by day, until one evening Annie 
was forced to exclaim : 

"Why ! they go here like the rustling of new ribbons, 
don't they?" 

Some time ago I had the pleasure of meeting at Mrs. 
Nott's Mr. E. C. Delevan of Ballstown, N. Y. ; and one 
morning among the letters while at Wilmington was one 
from him containing the money for ten copies of the 
little book, and also a lovely invitation from Mrs. Dele- 
van and himself to pay them a visit. 

Another day brought an order from Mr. A. S. Barnes 
of New York, for twenty-five copies, sent for by a far-off 



HOW 80 r 133 

Mrs. Eogers, preceptress of a seminary in Huntsville, 
Ala. ; and again an order for twenty-five from Mr. Will- 
iam Appleton of New York, to go to a book merchant 
also in Alabama. 

So in every place the good angels find new ways of 
helping on the work they long ago trailed before my 
spirit eyes. Then just before leaving, the last pleasant 
thing was a note from dear Mrs. Shubrick, beckoning 
me for a stay among the breezes of Newport, where she 
had taken rooms for the summer, expecting the Com- 
modore to come to her soon. We stopped at the same 
hotel with her, "The Bellevue," and the next morning 
coming out from breakfast she left me in one of the 
parlors talking with a lovely Miss Tayloe, who had come 
with her from Washington. In a few moments she re- 
turned with this sweet whisper on her lips : 

"I have been to see the landlord for you, and you are 
to pay only $18 a week for yourself and Miss Annie, and 
keep the lovely room that you have." 

"Ah !" I said, "that is not only having an angel to 
trouble the waters for one, but an angel to stay and lead 
one in also." 

I had seen by the papers that Mrs. Fillmore, with her 
son and daughter, was stopping there, and what a sur- 
prise it was to hear that only the day before, descending 
the stairs, she made a misstep, sprained her ankle, and 
was even then sitting up in her parlor with her pretty 
foot pillowed in a chair and the gloomy prospect before 
her of not being able to press it to the floor again in 
months. 

I first thought of going to see her immediately, 
then reflected that it might seem too presuming. That 
afternoon, though, her maid came with her card inviting 
me to pay her a little visit. 



134 TBS FORESHADOWED WAY. 

"Ah V^ she said, "now I am under the shadows and you 
will have to come and comfort me." 

"How so ?" I asked, "since you still have the light and 
the day and all around you that is bright and beautiful 
to look upon?" 

"More than that!" the daughter added. "She has 
books, and brother and I have just come in from order- 
ing a new stack of them for her." 

Then that evening after the steamer arrived from New 
York the maid came to my room again, and this time 
the daughter. Miss Abby, behind her — and what do you 
think? Before leaving the city Mrs. Fillmore had or- 
dered for herself a lovely black camel's hair bathing suit. 
It had just come, and seeing it of no use to her, she had 
sent it to me ; the maid had the box containing it in her 
arms, and Miss Abby had come along to soften a little 
the presentation. 

"Why !" I exclaimed, "that will be enough to make the 
waves and the fishes even receive me right royally, to 
say nothing of the thousand and one bathers there." 

"Ha ! ha !" she laughed. "And the sharks might too, 
if this were Cape Island — or Cape May." 

I had no thought of doing anything with the book 
while at Newport, but Mrs. Shubrick and Mrs. Fillmore, 
whom all the ladies were going to see, introduced it; 
and I doubt if, after that, a dozen ladies left the hotel 
without a copy. One, perhaps more wealthy than the 
rest, came for ten — said she was going to present them 
to the Sunday School Library of her church in New 
York — and what a long, lovely visit I had with her, 
ending with her charge to be sure and send her my ad- 
dress when I should come again to the city. 

A few mornings before our stay ended, the President 
arrived drawn by four white horses and accompanied 



now SOT 135 

with a storm of hurrahs. He tarried in the drawing- 
room a moment for congratulations and then very 
gracefully bowed himself out for receptions above more 
heartfelt. His son and daughter and their dear mother 
had been waiting for him all the night. Thus love out- 
watcheth the stars. Love ! love ! — but softly with that 
word lest my heart, like an orphaned babe, awaken and 
cry for one whom the grave hath swallowed up. 

After the President and his suite left for Boston, Miss 
Abby came down to the drawing-room and played for 
me a long, long time, closing with "The Last Rose of 
Summer^' with variations, and beneath her touch every 
note was sweet enough to have been a rose fresh from 
the vale of Song. The evening before, when all were 
out on the veranda watching for the President, her 
mother told me that while in New York she had ordered 
at the establishment of Brown a thousand-dollar harp 
to be placed in her daughter's room at Washington for 
a surprise on her return. Oh ! how Fortune does love to 
shower her gifts into the laps of some and pass them 
by the wistful gaze of others ! 

On my return to Boston from Portland I had a letter 
to Mr. Gr. P. R. James, the novelist, wbo has just come 
to this country. He was stopping at the "Revere 
House," and the morning I called he happened to be in 
the parlor entertaining some gentlemen, which I did not 
know until Annie saw the servant going to him with 
the letter and card. Espying his friend's name upon 
the envelope, he excused himself and came directly over 
to me, leaving Mrs. James and the daughter to entertain 
the other callers, who soon left, and we all went up to 
their private parlor. Mr. James gave me his arm, and 
ascending the second flight of stairs apologized for tak- 
ing me up so far. 



136 THE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

"Oh, not at all !'' I said. "Poets and novelists are ex- 
pected to be flighty/' 

"And often to their own inconvenience as well as their 
friends/' was his laughing rejoinder. 

In the room several persons were waiting, but again 
he left them to the mother and the daughter. The son 
devoted himself to Annie, while we had a lovely familiar 
little talk. Altogether, his warm cordiality surprised 
me quite as much as he expressed himself pleased ; and 
coming away, he said: 

"I must have a copy of the little work that my friend 
writes me about here," glancing again at the letter, the 
name to which it seemed that he had hardly had time to 
look at. Annie promised to bring him one. 

After rising we had a little time with Mrs. James and 
the daughter, w^hile Mr. James excused himself again 
for a moment. The ladies are very pleasant, and Annie 
thinks the son fully as elegant as the father, who would 
come down to the outside door with us, and kept his 
arm around me all the way lest I should fall. I said: 

"Your heroes are proverbially the most gallant men 
in the world, and I am not surprised since they have 
Mr. G. P. E. James for their master." 

"Ho ! ho ! and do you refer to those old fellows of 
mine," he inquired, "who they say always make their 
appearance on horseback?" 

"Certainly," I said, "and as all great heroes must 
have on them the weight of years, it is doubtless from 
consideration for their comfort that you present them 
on horseback." 

"N"ot at all, not at all," he said, "but with sole refer- 
ence to their appearance, the clumsy old fellows!" 
Peaching the parlor floor, I begged him not to come 
down any farther. 



1 



HOW 80? 137 

"Indeed I must," he replied, "and I shall not think 
the way long until I turn to go back." 

Ah! not more surely is goodness the chief er part of 
greatness than that the more culture and the more re- 
finement one has, always the more gracious and the more 
beautiful one is. So we took leave of the author of these 
three volumes that I send you, one of which I read long 
ago with my own eyes, and the other two we finished 

while at Newport. 

* * an * 

To 

My Sisters, 

Allen Seminary, 

Rochester, N. Y, 



138 THE FORESHADOWED WAY. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

IN SOME FAR TIME . 

Providence, B. I., October, 1851. 
^^Stone Cottage" then is really a thing of the past, 
end dear father has pitched his tent in the little city 
among the hills of the Canaseraga ! I was sorry to hear 
that the old-fashioned house with the big chimneys and 
overshadowed with elms could not be secured. Father 
writes, though, that he has the promise of it in the 
spring. It will not be "Aldrich Hill" with all its sunny 
elopes, but still so far like it as to brighten a little, I 
^een, the smiles in sweet mother's face. Lovely new 
furnishings for it, too, have been selected and prized, 
HI ^ if the books continue to go as they have done for 
the last week. Providence alone, sweet mother's birth- 
place, will leave little unprovided for. The piano must 
have reached you ere this, and is doubtless already 
adding greatly to your progress. I love to think of you 
all in the new home, making the air vocal with your 
songs, dimpling the carpets with your tread and bright- 
ening your eyes at sight of your own paintings on the 
walls! It seem^s too much to hope, too much to look 
for, but it can be and will be, my dear ones, only so you 
are industrious enough to win for yourselves what the 
angels are plainly holding in store. Schooldays are not 
a circle never to end, but long and tedious as they may 
sometimes seem, the last will come far too soon. Be- 



IN SOME FAR TIME. 139 

sides, there are others farther down the line who will 
be waiting for your places. Then let no hour pass with- 
out adding something to that inner pearly dwelling that 
learning builds around about the soul, whose walls never 
crumble, whose windows never darken, and whose lights 
never go out. 

Father is delighted with the mill he has found ad- 
joining to the town, and thinks with the packet Julia 
took to him he will be able to put it in perfect repair. 
So all is bright because we all have something to do. 

Aft^r finishing Providence there are two small places 
to go to near it ; then I go back to New York and take 
the steamer to New Orleans, and thence up the Mis- 
sissippi to all the towns and cities that border its shores. 
Shall visit St. Louis and then back by steamer to Louis- 
ville, Cincinnati; thence by rail to Cleveland, and so 
around by Buffalo to the valley and the home that I 
have just been picturing — the home vocal with your 
songs and bright with the joy on all your happy faces. 
Sarah and Pamelia will not be married until then, and 
meantime dear father and mother have the prospect of 
making their first wedding for their daughters amid sur- 
roundings that three little summers ago no one of us 
could possibly have imagined. It is all just as it was 
f( reshadowed to me, though, in the vision — the wander- 
ings, I mean, and the gathering, gathering and never 
possessing. It was foreshadowed, it has to be, and no 
cne could prevent it if he would. Neither could I ; my 
sieps seem angel-led, one forced after the other. I plan 
Eothing, and yet the way seems always opened up be- 
fore me as if arranged by unseen hands. Nothing sur- 
prises me, and so it will be on, on, on, until at last the 
circlets of gold that seem now so inexhaustible will all 
suddenly disappear and in their stead a something that 



140 TEE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

reeembled nothing but a dark green substance in rolls 
or bunches of which in the vision I gathered the same 
as of the gold, gathered as I wandered and with the same 
indifference to possession, until finally that, too, dis- 
appeared, and farther in toward the heart of the gloomy 
old presence from which I had gathered so long, the 
gold shone out again, but in tablets or squares too 
large to hold in my hands and I folded them in my 
arms. Their edges, as I look back at them, were 
creased up and down instead of across like the circlets ; 
not exactly square, a shade longer than wide, thin and 
shining like gold. Unlike all that I had gathered be- 
fore, they stayed with me. I walked away with them, 
and as I walked something like the pride of possession 
warmed in my thoughts; the gloomy old presence, too, 
that had borne me company through all the long wan- 
dering years seemed now no longer keeping pace. I 
moved more rapidly, too, than before, seeming almost 
to fly until at last I stopped, turned about and saw 
that the long weary way had been all a long, climbing 
way. Then I turned to go on, but saw far out in 
the distance the light breaking through all the clouds. 
Oh! the light had come to me again, the light! the 
light! the light! And just so in some far time the 
light will come again. 

Some of you heard the vision when I told it there 
to dear father and mother a little time after I had lost 
my eyes. Doubtless it made little impression upon you 
then. Now though, when not only so many more scenes 
of it have come to pass, but the wanderings of it even 
are far on the way, you will understand it better and 
be on the watch, as I am always, for the next scene, which 
is ere long surely to come; and the next and the next 
and the next — ^four more only— and then your lonely. 



IN SOME FAR TIME. 141 

wandering sister with veiled eyes may return with the 
light and the day shining as bright in her way as now 
it is shining in yours. 

4: ♦ ♦ « 

To 

My Sister?,, 

Allen Seminary, 

Rochester, N. Y. 



142 THE FORESHADOWED WAY. 



CHAPTER XX. 

A BREAK IN THE CLOUDS. 

New Yorlc, November, 1852. 

Leaving Bangor by steamer for Boston, we arrived 
at the '^Eevere House'^ f ^Hy an hour after midnight ; 
and hardly were our heads pressing the pillow and the 
borders of the dreamland drifting into view when 
a heavy knock at the door announced a better for me 
bearing the President's stamp and seal, fr^m Washing- 
ton, D. C. And thus it was, dear, dear j5v* rs. Fillmore, 
that your favor, as gracious as beautiful, and as beauti- 
ful as kind, had at last overtaken me — so slowly are 
all bright things wont to march when once upon my 
way. Perchance they in heaven feared lest the sweet 
beckoning in it might bring me all too soon to the 
light and the day. 

I had heard of Dr. TurnbulFs wonderful cures, re- 
storing Prince George of Cambridge and others to 
sight, but never dreamed of his coming to America; 
and I decided at once to profit by your kind sugges- 
tion and leave in the morning for New York, where, 
an hour after my arrival, I waited upon the Doctor 
at his hotel. In deference to the lady President, Mrs. 
Fillmore, whose pleasant mention of me had not been 
at all obliterated from his memory, hardly had my card 
been glanced at ere I heard him saying to the usher: 

"Show the lady in — I will see her at once." After 
rolling his powerful magnifiers over my eyes and dis- 



A BREAK IN THE CLOUDS. 143 

covering in each what he called a needle point of pupil 
nnobscured, he said: 

"You still have the light, madame, but not so as 
to distinguish objects, I think." 

"No," I replied, "only the shadows of things, and 
those when very near." Then he cupped the balls 
gently which, enlarging them, perforce thinned the sur- 
face, and I could readily descry the outline of an ob- 
ject. 

"Ah!" he said, "the nerves to your eyes are perfect, 
and all to be contended with are these opacities across 
each pupil, which I think can be thinned away suffi- 
ciently to let you walk by yourself. But not in a day, 
which most of you Americans, I find, think quite long 
enough for any kind of a cure." 

Not in a day, surely; but now, after having visited 
him six times, I begin to distinguish my friends by 
their dress, and with my eyes a little shaded I can see 
the colors in the carpet. For the first time in seven 
years I walked in the street this morning by myself; 
that is, with no little hand on my arm. I could not 
distinguish the people as they passed, but I could tell 
the ladies from the gentlemen ; and on one of the carts, 
as it stopped near the walk, I deciphered the immense 
word ICE ; and at this fresh peep at the world of letters 
I laughed outright, and positively clapped my hands 
for joy, exclaiming: 

"I see! I see! I see!" The black shadows on the 
walk, even, were beautiful; and, oh! may not this pale 
dawn betoken a brighter morrow with thinner veils 
between? The Doctor gives me not the slightest hope 
of ever being able to read, but they who lose and find 
again should not weigh and complain if not quite all 
be restored. Besides^ seven years have taught my 



144 T3E F0BES3AD0WED WAY. 

thoughts to weave their own reading, my heart to coin 
its own feelings; and so only I have light enough to 
guide my own steps, and peradventure watch the stars 
when they rise and the sky when the sun is low — in 
a word, so I be no longer barred from the bright green 
earth that I left so long, long ago, how shall I ever find 
words to thank you in for writing me, dear Mrs. Fill- 
more? Indeed, if I had all the blessings the white- 
handed angels bring I could never, never, never repay 
you. 

I was very sorry to miss the pleasure of meeting 
you and Miss xlbby when you were last in New York; 
but if I go to New Orleans, where the Doctor talks of 
passing the winter, I shall return by way of Washing- 
ton ; and, ah ! then how sweet to look upon you, my dear, 
dear friend, with these eyes which your kindness has 
so much blessed. Would they could gather up all the 
smiles in the world and set them circling around your 
heart. 

Last evening, favored with cards from Mrs. General 
Ashley for myself and the little sister I have v/ith me, 
I attended a reception at the Metropolitan. I could 
distinguish easily all the graceful, gliding forms of the 
ladies, and recognize many of them by their dresses. 
Everybody is rejoicing at my prospect of seeing again, 
but I sometimes weep from fear lest the sudden effect 
of the subtle vapors the Doctor is using upon my eyes 
may not, cannot last. Indeed, he says I must go to 
New Orleans for continued treatment, or they will lose 
all they have gained; and as you can imagine, I am 
making every possible exertion to do so. 

« « 4: « 

To Mrs. President Fillmore, 
Washington, D, (7, 



CAST UP02f TEE WATERS. 



145 



CHAPTER XXL 

CAST UPON THE WATERS. 

New Orleans, La., April 1853. 



Ah! you have heard rightly, I do indeed see agam- 
at least well enough to know the mornmg from he 
evening, and the noon sun from the moon coquett ng 
hrougi her watery veils. Sometimes, too when the 
n It is clear the stars come twinkling softly domi o 
mfey , tthe smiles of friends come stealing famUy 
n upon my heart. But since the P*l-ation of my 
letter to Mrs. Fillmore, that you saw, heralding not 
only "I Bee again! I see again!" but recounting a 
c re or so more^ of the Doctor's wonderful cures, peo- 
ple have been crowding to him from every part of ttie 
country-by steamer, by land, by every means pos b le 
hat Sople can travel they have come; and natura ly 
ess tUhas been found for treating my ey-, -d a^ 
cordingly their improvement more slow. Som Wtte 
eain though, waits upon every loss, and my Uttle gaiu 
fnthil casVwas no further charge for the treatoen 
T should receive. Still, one cannot even stay in this 
'pletsl loving, pleasure giving city withou^--^; 
and coming to the last one, as it seemed, of those who 
would hlv! "A Place in Thy Memory," I was seeing 
r alternative but to leave the Doctor and tak^ up my 
line of march again with the little books. But that 
evening in the drawing-room, aa though some good 



146 ^^^ f'ORESHADOWED WAY. 

angel had been explaining to liim what Mozart called 
*'all about it/' a stranger accosted me with: 

"Your pardon, Madame, but a year ago my wife 
and myself came across *A Place in Thy Memory/ 
which so beguiled a day for us in a dreary hotel that 
at evening we each declared that we would not take 
ten dollars for what we had profited, and promised, 
should we ever meet the author, to hold ourselves that 
much in her debt." I thanked him cordially, as you 
may imagine, and was made very happy by an intro- 
duction to his little, black-eyed wife. The next morn- 
ing I received my stranger friends' card, "S. Wann 
and Lady, of Belfast, Ireland," announcing that them- 
selves and three of their party desired copies of my little 
work all at the same price, with the four twenties 
smiling in the envelope — a touch of Job's better days, 
you see, as well as some of his brighter ones. Great, 
wise Job! He must have been blind, else he never 
could have said: 

"Behold! mine eyes are dim with sorrow, and the 
Lord hath set darkness in all my paths." 

But you are wondering how I found words golden 
enough or beautiful enough to thank those four pur- 
chasers in, those four friends from over the sea. Why ! 
all I could say to them was: 

"Warm hearted Erin gave thee thy blood and thy 
name/' Where one really wills, though, to make re- 
turn, sooner or later there comes an opening, I believe, 
in the turn of things for at least the semblance of it. 
They were a gay party, en route to the West Indies, and 
would return in time for the Carnival, or the great 
masquerade at the St. Louis: anrl when the tickets were 
given out to each lady ^uest, I bethought me to keep 
enough ot those accorded to my little sister and myself 



CAST UPON THE WATERS. 147 

for those four friends and their ladies. Days passed — 
prices fabulous were offered for tickets that could not 
be had. On the last day and almost the last hour the 
party arrived by steamer from Havana; but as well 
rush to the office and inquire for cards to a revel in 
fairy-land as ask for even one of those gilt laden, em- 
bossed passports for the masquerade of that evening. 
And do you see ? — to soften now the disappointment of 
those pleasure seekers by the presentation of the cards 
put aside for them was, to say the least, a crumb of their 
own bread a little time before cast upon the waters. 

The scarcity of a thing always puts it in demand; 
and more copies of the little book coming to be asked 
for, I wrote the publisher for a package. One of them 
was for a Mr. Smith, of New York, who came to the 
Doctor through my letter to Mrs. Fillmore, and whose 
eyes had been largely profited by his treatment; and 
another for a Mr. Menlove, of Liverpool, also a patient 
for an injury to one of his eyes, sustained in a storm 
at sea. The little books came, and I sent them by the 
bell-boy, each to his room; and not that day, but the 
next one, two notes were sent to my room containing 
a check for an hundred dollars, with the same little re- 
quest in each: 

"Stay and use this for your eyes'^ — so great and so 
beautiful men can be. 

Ah ! what book ever blessed author more ? It is my 
widow's cruse that the replenishing angel never wholly 
forgets. Again, though, it is running low, and better 
I be counselled thereby and depart. Besides, April is 
late enough to tarry in New Orleans. Besides, too, 
my eyes seem to have reached the utmost of all that can 
be done for them, or at least have reached the utmost 
of this Doctor's skill. At times, though, the opacity 



148 ^^^ FORESHADOWED WAY. 

that has so long hung over the windows of my soul has 
seemed hardly more than a mist of floating particles; 
then again it thickens back like the coming on of night, 
when louder and louder grows the assurance in my heart 
that however potent Dr. TurnbulFs cuppings and vapors 
may be for thinning the clouds, they may never, lift 
them from my sky until the last scene of that dark fore- 
shadowed way has been wandered through. 

Socially the winter here has been one of rare profit ; 
while seeing a little, and daily, hourly expecting to see 
more has made the world almost as glad as new. 
Through Mrs. Guy Johnson, of Petersburg, I once ex- 
changed a few letters with Madam Walton Le Vert, of 
Mobile; and here at the opening of the St. Charles, 
while her daughter and the little sister I have with 
me were dancing their curls straight, we chanced to 
meet, and since have exchanged calls. Yesterday, re- 
ferring to my prospect of seeing again, I w^as sur- 
prised to hear her say that she was once nine months 
confined to her room without the light and the day — 
nine moons, and in that time mastered a language and 
learned to play the guitar. 

The friend who presented us named her, "the Madame 
de Stael of i\.merica"; and listening to her brilliant 
conversation, one readily accords to her that meed of 
praise, if not more. 

To-morrow's steamer will leave me at the little city 
of Natchez on the Mississippi, where a dear Mrs. Og- 
den, who has been some time here T\dth her daughter, 
a patient, has invited me for a stay at her place just 
out of the city. Then at Memphis a box of the little 
books will be waiting; also at Louisville, Cincinnati, 
Cleveland and Buffalo. Thence I wind down into the 



CAST VPOV TBE WATERS. 140 

Canaseraga Valley for a visit to my parents in their 
new home. 

When this new light first came and was brightest I 
went to them for a night and a day, and as through 
a glass darkly could retrace the smiles on their faces. 
My elder sisters I could readily distinguish the one 
from the other. The younger ones, though, seven years 
had grown beyond the possibility of recall. There is a 
portrait there too that you know of, whose eyes wore uj 
look of reproach, however close pressed or howe^e^ 
turned, peradventure to capture some glimpse of their 
meaning. 

Thoughts are swift winged, and yours are already 
poising over a day in a summer gone when one went 
away with his palms written over with my promises aiid 
my tears. But, friend of the long ago, as all music is 
one, so all love is one, only voiced in the heart to differ- 
ent keys and rung through different chords. The or.e 
in heaven wooed and won love, and bequeathed to my 
heart a memory majestic and beautiful to keep; while 
another, half a world away, whose letter I have here 
to-day telling of naught but loss and disaster, makes 
not loving impossible, and forgetting — ^treason against 
all that the heart of woman was fashioned to admire. 
Then why say we love twice or thrice, as the case may 
be, when the song is one and the harp the same, the 
tones only varying as beneath the touch of a less or a 

more masterly hand! 

* * *. * 

To 

Mrs. Geo. W. Fisher, 

Bochester, N. Y. 



150 ^^^ FORESHADOWED WAT. 



li 



CHAPTER XXII. 

ALL THESE YEARS. 

St. Joseph, Mo., July, 1859. 

This is one of those exclusive rainy days that banish 
the world and house in all sweet thought and feeling; 
and from up out the distance and the long ago I have 
evoked my friend, Mary Weld, and bade her enter and 
sit down by me here while our souls trade whispers 
that go lingering through the heart like boxed music. 

Why have I not written you since that long last 
night in the Institution — ask me why? The Fates 
are very nice friends, but vastly bad enemies. Once 
on a time they fell out with me, and from that day to 
this all bright things are as surely turned from my 
path as the beams from the sun are though shot straight 
down from heaven. What wonder then that no letter 
of thine through all these years has been able to reach 
me until this thy last came rustling in, fresh and wel- 
come as the green leaf in the beak of the dove. It was 
a day visitant, white-winged, but far into the night 
my thoughts were busying themselves with the broken 
dreams of the past, and alongside your love-stars, now 
so bright, I placed mine, long since gone out, leaving 
the world as cold and empty to me as a bell without a 
tongue, and as charmless as a harp without a string. 

You say as of yore: "Your William." Ah! that 
little word up out of the silence, that whisper across 



ALL THESE TEARS. 151 

the mystic strand that Death has drawn between! that 
echo of memory, that voice of the heart that will not 
be altogether hushed ! Often, often in my wanderings, 
isolate and alone, when the last footfall has died away 
and the world is still, my spirit dares conjure him 
hither as in that far time when I knew only happiness 
and him. 

How I wonder, Mary, at your accurate recall of the 
vision! Of the others who were there and heard it 
again and again I have met no one who has remem- 
bered more than that it had darkness in it, and finally, 
ended in the light ; whereas you name scene after scene, 
as though you had been following me through them 
along all the years. Is it because I first shared it with 
you, with my own eyes ablaze with wonder as to what 
it could possibly mean, that now you know exactly where 
I am in it ? Ah ! thou sweet crier upon the watch- 
tower of my night, how little I then dreamed that the 
reality like a dark abyss lay yawning before me and 
was so soon to engulf the future, along whose horizon, 
like a blissful mirage, I had planted so many cities of 
unexplored delights. Trying to interpret the strange 
phenomenon, you first suggested that the dark old pres- 
ence might mean the world, and myself gathering golden 
specks of knowledge from it. But, alas! never was 
sweet imagining farther astray; and, mark now, the 
literal fulfillment of that phase: gathering, gathering, 
and never possessing. After losing the lands that my 
grandfather left him my father became a miller; and 
that he should no longer have to rent and be so often 
compelled to change place, I begged him to find a 
mill where he would be willing to stay always, and the 
little books and I would do our best to have ready the 
payments thereto. Do you see? — and wbat with th^ 



152 THE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

dear ones in school, the rent day for the larger home 
that was needed, the mill and its ever-recurring repairs, 
you have that other mystic phase of the vision: the 
disappearance of the golden circles from my hand al- 
rnost faster than I was able to gather them. 

This pouring rain reminds me of the late flood that 
swept through the valley, bearing down all before it 
save the dam to the mill. Over that, they say, the mad- 
dened waters rolled, doing no harm, as though the Lord 
had said to His mightiest angel : "Go ! hold it thou with 
thy two hands, that not a pebble be lifted!" — and all 
for the sake of the dear, gray-coated, gray-hatted, white- 
handed, smiling old miller there, in whose thoughts, 
as in his heart, the song of David is a song of his own : 

"Bless the Lord ! praise the Lord ! my soul." 

But, Mary, this sixth scene of the visio7i with the 
gathering of the "golden specks" has lasted too long; 
and as one goes to study the chart of a country he is 
to travel through, my weary thoughts are forever look- 
ing back into that strange foreshadowing for what came 
next, and then out over the slow-turning years, perad- 
venture to find in the times some sign of approach to 
the seventh scene. But even with that passed, two scenes 
more will remain to be waited for and watched for ere 
the end with the light and the day; and judging by 
the ages that have lengthened their shadows over my 
heart since the coming of the sixth scene, I shall be 
too old, too worn, too near the cold river to more than 
shout : 

"Oh! the light, the light!" — and then, as Job says, 
go the way whence I shall not return. 

Alas! not till dreams are panoramaed, sighs are 
painted, and fancies blushed into form; not till hopes 
are chiseled, beaded bubbles snatched from the waves. 



ALL THESE YEARS. 153 

and moons fished np from the seaSj may I hope to pass 
again in this world one such millennium of brightness 
as you look on or live through every day. Oh ! would 
then I were so lifted up in all that is exalted and 
changeless that although in darkness I would be stars 
unto myself, my thoughts silvering out their own light; 
and imagination, instead of sombering the coming years 
with dread, illumining them vrith hope-lights, the while 
deeds cluster in my memory worthy of one for vvhose 
sake pitying Heaven stooped so low as to not only fore- 
shadow the way, but to set it along w^ith that never- 
failing guidance that Paul must have been claiming 
for himself when he asked : 

^'Be they not all ministering spirits?'^ 

How hard it is to realize that dear Mrs. Seager is 
dead. It is going to be harder still, though, I imagine 
to find one adequate to the task of gathering up her 
rich sayings and doings and presenting them properly 
to the world. Soon after the light left my eyes she 
came and captured a bundle of my school-day effu- 
sions, and went away determined to make a little volume 
of them for my special benefit. She returned the next 
morning, however, sorrowing that she had lost them all 
before she reached home. 1 told her that some good 
angel, knowing how mortified the author would be, 
must have followed her and stolen the roll from under 
her arm. And so now I should fancy her spirit follow- 
ing after the one appointed to make a volume of her 
productions. 

So far, and not a word about or to your William. 
Please divide with him, though, as large a portion of 
my love as will make at least a rose-leaf upon his al- 
ready brimming cup. 

Strangers may interest and new friends fascinate^ 



154 THE FORESHADOWED WAT. 

but it is our old friends who relight the waning fires 

upon the heart's worn hearthstones; and do you think 

I have no pleasure in the thought of soon being with 

you? Why! my joy at meeting you will be enough to 

shake every lintel to your prairie home; and would I 

could come with so much of sight as you saw described 

in my letter to Mrs. Fillmore some years ago. But, 

alas! it was a little sunny opening in the wilderness 

merely, too bright to tarry long, and I must wait for 

another like it till the closing scene of the vision that, 

like a glittering mirage, seems forever distancing itself 

from my view. 

* * * * 

To 
Mrs. Wm. Weld, 

Illinois. 



THE SEVENTH SCENE. I55 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE SEVENTH SCENE. 

Plainfield, N. J., July, 1863. 

Hours are long on the dial of a waiting, watching 
heart; and looking back now over my tread-milings 
and tread-millings of the world around until the streets 
to nearly all the cities of America have come to know 
my shadow, it seems that the clock of Time must have 
been turning backward as well as forward, so slowly the 
long fourteen years of wandering, wandering, have 
crept over my life since the gates to that lonely Insti- 
tution turned back, and I passed out with the little 
books, to return no more, nevermore. 

Wearied with the "hard times" and scarcity of money 
brought on by the war, I crossed over into Canada, and 
left Quebec last November to spend the winter in Penn- 
sylvania, Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey, all the 
South there is left to us now, and lo ! the very first place 
I was confronted with tlije utter disappearance of the 
"shining specks," "tiny gold circles" or gold dollars, 
whose appearance, you remember, in 1849 brought about 
the sixth scene of the vision, exactly as I had de- 
scribed it to you in my letter from Oyster Bay, the 
summer before. That quite converted your father to 
a belief that all the other scenes might follow. "Still," 
he said, "the gold dollars are a Government issue, and 
nothing less than a change of the Government can 



156 THE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

cause their recall" — doubting, you see, if ever a day- 
could come when not a vestige of them would remain 
"on the side of the world toward me." 

It seemed impossible then, but look at it now when 
not only the tiny gold dollars, but all the gold and all 
the silver, even, has been gathered up and sent to other 
lands for the necessities and ammunitions of a civil 
war, -^^hile Just as literally quantities of a dark green 
material "in lumps, rolls, or bunches" have risen up 
in their stead — quantities of a dark green material in 
stamps of three cents, five cents, ten cents, twenty-five 
cents, fifty cents; and when a dollar of it is made up, 
or an hundred dollars, what have you but a stack of 
"dark green stuff" that looking on, one instinctively 
pronounces worthless, "the edges only flashing golden," 
forty cents on a dollar. 

I had reached Greensburg, and been there about a 
week when, having a draft of $250.00 of it made up for 
my publisher, a little cousin I have with me undertook 
to count it. The mass of wads, rolls and bunches were 
in the hat box to my trunk. Emptying it all on the 
bed she first undertook to count it by making up one 
dollar at a time from dimes and fives and twenty-fives ; 
but confused, or the stack getting too high and toppling 
over, I proposed to make stacks of five dollars each, 
laying them along on the bed in rows. When she had 
perhaps a dozen lines running up and down the counter- 
pane, the landlord's daughter came for her to go and 
play a duet in the parlor; and as it was near noon, I 
told her to push it all up under the pillow and leave it 
till after dinner. But instead of putting it under the 
pillow she merely stacked it up against it, and as I 
threw myself down for a few moments' rest my hand 
went so deep into the papery stuff I was startled. 



THE SEVENTH SCENE. 157 

Clutching a handful of it I drew it over my face to 
the other hand, and was wadding it up and thinking 
what worthless rags it is, when the sun shining on it 
from the window revealed to the little light in my 
eyes its shade of green. Like a flash the recollection 
of the "dark green stuff" of the visio7i came to me. 
Look at it and then say as I am saying over and over, 
"Lo! the seventh scene of the vision with the sounds 
of alarm, even, that filled the air and the rougher ways 
that it brought." Sounds of alarm indeed! Hardly 
were we out of place after place through southern Penn- 
sylvania before the approach of Morgan's band, Jack- 
son's host or the armies of Lee set the people to flying in 
every direction. In Columbia the stillness of a Sunday 
morning was suddenly broken with the cry: "The 
rebels! The rebels!" while their shells were falling 
into the river right in front of our windows. In an 
instant, it seemed, the streets were thronged with the 
flying people, the boy soldiers from the fort on the 
other side of the river came rattling their cannon over 
the bridge that some one stupidly fired before half their 
comrades were over. Then flames and shouts and yells 
filled the air while the whisper rose in my heart : "Ex- 
actly as it was in the vision/" and now, even, every 
hour in the day come telegrams of battles lost or won, 
hundreds or thousands slain, and the country rocked to 
its very center with doubt and fear. In the vision, 
though, you remember finally all grew calm again ; and 
as Vicksburg and Port Hudson have fallen, and 
Morris Island is fast losing ground, so the Lord may 
continue to help, and ere long all indeed grow calm 
again. 

At all events, as fourteen years of the wandering, wan- 
dering, gathering the tiny gold dollars, have passed, so 



158 TEE FORESHADOWED WAT. 

the seeming ages of gathering the dark green stuff are 
surely to be lengthened over my way. And how long, 
think you, will it last — how long ere that too disap- 
pear and those thin golden slates shine out? 

Far back, that my father should be no more tortured 
with the rent day for the mill, I pledged the pay- 
ments for it, and one draft more is still to be sent be- 
fore that and the grounds adjoining, where my cot- 
tage was to have been, will be paid for. Besides, during 
these long years my parents have been living in a place 
not their own. The rent, though, has always been paid 
by one so far away that they have lost the day of it, 
and all there have nearly forgotten but that the home 
is indeed their own. Meantime the daughters return- 
ing from school, have hung the walls around with their 
paintings, and one after another been married there. 
Five weddings have hallowed the old place ; and goings 
and comings, and tears of parting and joys of meet- 
ing, until the heads of the dear old people have whit- 
ened with the snows of years. What wonder then, that 
when I have told them of my cottage among the trees, 
wherein they were to pass their last days, their pleas- 
ure seemed not to keep pace with my ovvTI. I have 
thought sometimes they doubted my ever being able 
to accomplish it, and wondered at it, too, after having 
surrounded them with so many surprises. But this is 
it : they love the old place among the elms. It is dearer 
to them as home than any other place could ever be. 
Yet it is now to be sold, and — do you see? — they must 
not go out of their paradise weeping. 

After my visit to Boston I wrote you of the deposit 
I had left there toward my cottage among the trees, 
adding, I think: ''unless some angel come by night to 
dig it up." There came an occasion, though, for both 



TEE SEVENTH SCENE. 159 

principal and interest. My tour through the Canadas 
resulted in a much larger deposit that I placed in a 
Government bond, called it a corner-stone, and too 
deep laid to be lifted; but now that too has been sum- 
moned and is going for the first payment toward the 
old home among the elms, while the rest is to be toiled 
out as only He who so long ago trailed the gathering 
of the ^^dark green stuff' before my spirit eyes can pos- 
sibly understand. Plainly, all that was foreshadowed 
has to be. Not a step of it may be lessened, and there 
is nothing left for me now but to take up the little 
books and wander on, on, faced toward the eighth scene, 
the disappearance of the "dark green stuff f even as far, 
far back when I came down the steps of the Institution 
the seventh was to be waited for and watched for. 

The veils the prophets of old saw through are not 
turned to millstones, and it is not much wonder that 
my eyes should have been for a moment so lifted up to 
the future. But why that strange foreshadowing of 
the way ? What good did it do, since the approach of no 
one event of it is in the least dreamed of until it has 
fully transpired; and never a step more or less of it 
taken either than would have been without the fore- 
shadowing? In my thoughts, though, I am always 
turning back to it, comparing the real, as I live it, with 
the shadow, and looking for what is to come next, just 
as one goes to study the chart of a country he is to travel 
through, and, peradventure, in that way I am held more 
steadily on to the end. x\h! the end! Pray where is 
that to be — on the other side of the dark river or this ? 
It was in light, though, wherever it is to be, and that 
is something to look forward to. God's ways are not 
as our ways, and what end He had or still may have 
to serve by it is, plainly, not yet for me to know. 



160 TEE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

As the war has raised the price of everything else, 
so the price of the little books has risen also. Ah ! that 
little book that has everywhere proven passport, spend- 
ing money, profit, and around whose name the world 
seems never weary wreathing its praise ! All through 
Delaware the success of it was beautiful. I had no 
letters of introduction, and the price of it being changed 
left not even the advantage of former lists of names 
to begin with. Still, we went to Dover first. The 
Governor was not there, but toward evening he and 
his staff very unexpectedly arrived, just to pass the 
night. The landlord had heard me inquire for His 
Excellency, and brought him up directly. I introduced 
myself and the cause of the little book to him as best I 
could; and it would have done your heart good, as it 
did all in heaven, to see how benignly and beautifully 
he took the pen from Couzie's hand, and as an example 
to all Delaware headed the list with his own right loyal 
name, 

"William Cannon Paid $1.50.^' 

The next morning the Secretary of State followed, 
the then Speaker of the Senate, and the Speaker of the 
House, and then a long line of the Members of the 
Legislature, and then all the town. Do you see ? — that 
was the commencement, and we went on just that way 
all over the little State, hearing the rustling of wings 
every step of the way. 

0, success! thou bright winged genie to human am- 
bition, thou sweet rewarder of toil ! What is there that 
success does not make beautiful? What drudgery so 
homely or hardship so sad that victory does not turn 
it all to rejoicing, and pour brimming cups of thanks- 
giving for every bittor the soul may have tasted. 

Prom Newcastle we crossed the river to Salem, N". J., 



THE SEVENTH SCENE. 161 

where your gifted friend, Miss Maylin, was the first to 
come out to meet me ; and what with her, the sweet Miss 
Abby Paul, and the three copies of ''A Place in Thy 
>Iemory" that long ago found their way into that scrap 
of Eden, the whole town was speedily turned into a 
little city of friends, many with a capital F, and some 
with a little one. I can never tell you the half that fol- 
lowed. 

"Thee must ride with us to-morrow'' — "I shall come 
for thee and thy little cousin second day evening" — 
"third day" — "fourth day" — "seventh day," and all the 
days. Nearly a hundred subscribed for the little books 
before they came. Mr. Clement Acton let a dear Miss 
Thompson have his horse and carriage, and we passed 
one "seventh day" among her friends in the country, 
and returned with fourteen added names for the little 

book. Mr. A , you see, planted a big corner-stone, 

while Miss T , with her two white hands ran a 

little row along the walls of my cottage that then was to 
be — but, alas ! it was only a dream that was even then 
fading away. 

Like her distinguished cousin. Dr. Bowring, Miss 
Maylin's learning is really vast. Indeed, her lines of 
reading seemingly run from one end of time to the 
other, touching all the high places of thought, and span- 
ning the broadest seas of poesy. Her library, that was 
largely her father's, occupies the entire mansard to an 
old mansion. I passed much time with her there, and 
finally named it "the lighthouse of Salem." But I 
should fail to give you a just idea of your long-ago 
friend could I not tell you that in a thousand ways she 
reminds me of you. She talks like you, reads like you, 
comes in and goes out like you, smiling everywhere and 
blessing as she goes. 



162 THE FORESHADOWED WAY, 

Mrs. Sharp, whose husband is editor of The Standard, 
and one of the Government collectors of this blessed 
little State, is a Marylander, Southern all over, and al- 
most loyal; and among her other attentions I owe her 
for a visit to the quaint old lace-maker, whom I went 
to see partly from curiosity and partly to make a little 
pilgrimage to a place where your steps had fallen. The 
old lady entertained us with her bobbins, her lineage 
from Cowper's lace-makers down, stories of John New- 
ton, Watts, and then sang and played for us one of each 
of their hymns — Cowper's "God Moves in a Mysterious 
Way." During the process of struggling through the 
three hymns, eighteen verses in all, the little cousin I 
have with me and Mrs. S found it difficult to main- 
tain their gravity; but, dear old lady, my heart tried 
to hear it all, sweet and beautiful, as the souls of their 
pious authors doubtless would have done. 

Ah ! it is well, "and very well," as Alice Gary says, 
that there are not too many Salems along my wilder- 
ness way. I should grow too fond of sweet attentions 
and too accustomed to ease. Even now I am sitting 
here with the half fainting child Hope on my lap won- 
dering if ever, ever, ever the seeming ages between the 
seventh and eighth scenes of the vision will be length- 
ened over my way, and with the golden squares of the 
ninth — whatever they are to be — folded in my arms, I 
come again to behold the light and the day. 

4: ^ H: He 

To 
Mrs. Augusta Dean Buckley, 

Dunhirh, N. F. 



GLIMPSES OF THE END, 163 



CHAPTEE XXIV. 

GLIMPSES OP THE END. 

New Yorlc, November, 1878. 

The bells are proclaiming one more anniversary of 
that ancient day set apart for thanksgiving; and while 
the world without go to enumerate their gifts and break 
smiles upon them, my room here, three floors up and 
not over wide nor over long, has a letter in it full of 
singing birds and balmy breezes — a letter from up out 
the long, long ago, bearing back to me a friend, her two 
blue eyes love-lighted, her heart warm and full of 
whispering confidences such as erst we shared when thou 
and I were young. It is in the heart that we weigh and 
measure what we have, and with so much that was lost 
found again, who shall say that the jubilee I hold be 
not as rich and proud as any? 

You name rightly the way I have been coming long 
and dark and weary; but natural laggards in the way 
of duty are rarely brought to the highest feeding of 
which their souls are capable, save by pricks from that 
unspiritual god. Circumstance ; and could I by the turn- 
ing of my hand drift myself back to the laughing, 
gladsome thing I was on the day when the vision of 
this dark life swept before me, think you I would do 
it? What! change the wanderings of half a life-time, 
probing hearts, weighing souls and judging them by 
their voices, as Swedenborg says "the wise angels do," 



164 TEE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

for some bubbles of gladness always so sure to break 
while one lifts them ? Or forego one step of the climb- 
ing, have the way one touch smoother, or the springs 
to drink from in the least robbed of their bitter, when 
the goal to be reached would needs be set just so much 
farther down in the scale of being ? No, no — a thousand 
times no. It is far easier, though, to put hopeful 
thoughts like these on paper than to live them, speak 
them, smile them up through the storna and the cloud ; 
far easier to talk about coming out all the safer by the 
pearly gates than to tread low down the covert way that 
leads up to them. However, since the disappearance 
of the golden "circles or specks" and the coming on of 
the "dark green stuff in lumps, rolls or bunches," six- 
teen long, wandering years have rolled away with the 
gathering, gathering, and never possessing, as literally 
realized as the dawn and close of the days. Now, 
though, by the resumption of specie payment, the dura- 
tion of the dark green stuff is limited; and as the 
fragmentary part of it is already beginning to disap- 
pear, my long, foreshadowed way does not look so 
dense as it did, glimpses of the end seem breaking 
through sometimes, and it is far easier to keep hope 
on the wing. 

You marvel that I should not have found a resource 
in my voice; but when at the Institution I came to as- 
cend the scale for the old Professor, expecting to as- 
tonish him with the high compass of my soprano, lo ! 
instead of concert A, my voice stopped short at F; and 
after three times trying, the choke in my heart brought 
tears to my eyes. Seeing me standing there in deep 
black and knowing of the recent loss of my sight, the 
Professor exclaimed: 

"It is your great sorrow, my child, that has lowered 



OLIMPSES OF TEE END. 165 

your voice to contralto. In my own country I knew 
anLtanceofthat. You may overcome it." Meantime, 
though, another way was opening, the predestined way 
wherei; not only voice but every other power accorded 
, Tome was called into play. He who forecasts the Imes 
wherein our steps are to fall stands also dispenser at 
the fount of gifts, and apportions to each and every 
one I believe, according as the day of his need may be^ 
If ;« could stand at His elbow, though, each one won d 
no doubt presume to suggest this or that or the other 
as better for himself. At least I once persuaded my- 
self that oratory should not have been ornitted from he 
gifts accorded to me, and straightway committed such 
an offense against the proprieties as to l<^etoe-if, in- 
deed, the delivery of a poetic oration could be called 
lecturing. Kame says no motive is single and my 
reasons 'for such a step were as varied or "mrKcd" - 
any motive could possibly be. Paramount to all others 
though, I thought I saw in it a milder, easier way of 
smitfng the heart-rocks along the remainder of my wil- 
derness way. Besides, it was at a time when every per- 
son of any literary attainment whatever seemed turn- 
ing his or her attention to the rostrum as the one 
direct means of making talent serve its possessor; and 
chancing to hear an author say that a discourse of a 
> month's'labor had resulted in more to him pecuniari y 
than all the works he had published, I began to reason 
with myself that an audience of many persons should 
be no more formidable to me than an audience of one ; 
and the lecture was given first at Stemway Hall, New 
York. I won columns of praise in different places, was 
called "a lady Cicero," even. Then scores of mvita- 
tL followed! hut mostly in churches or for churches 
burned or in debt-one from a society of ladies m 



166 TEE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

Schenectady, of which Mrs. Dr. Nott was president. 
The proceeds of the lecture were to go for a benevolent 
purpose, which made the interest in it so general that 
the churches with their ministers, the college, the pro- 
fessor, president and all helped to compose the audi- 
ence. Dr. Darling made the presentation, and was 
thought to have written the review for the paper that 
closed with : 

^'There was a beauty of expression, a power of dis- 
crimination, and a reach of fancy in this lecture as It 
wandered through the peopled regions of imagination, 
that was as wonderful to us as any curiosity we have 
seen in many a day. The force of the most delicately 
conceived analysis of the inner workings of the mind 
and heart, traced with a precision and skill equal to 
that of him who follows closely the thin courses of life 
with the keen edge of the surgeon's knife, was seen in 
every part of her wonderful discourse." 

The next day the president of the college. Dr. Nott 
Potter, gave a dinner at his house in honor of Dr. 
Clark, of Albany, after his Prayer Day sermon for the 
college, to which many of the clergymen of the city were 
invited. Mrs. Dr. Nott, grandmother of the president, 
was invited to preside in place of Mrs. Potter, who was 
absent; and being Mrs. Nott's guest the invitation in- 
cluded me also. Dr. Clark of course occupied the seat 
at the president's right, while I had the honor of sit- 
ting at his left, with a very entertaining reverend at 
my left, who, when "grace" had been said and the carv- 
ing commenced, announced his attendance on my lecture 
the evening before with : 

"I did not know, madam, which of the many fine 
points to your lecture most to admire. . . . But 
you would only have to clip the lines a little to the 



GLIMPSES OF THE END 167 

Eden part to make of it a rare hexameter" — ^whereupon 
the president remarked to Dr. Clark : 

"The lecture^ Doctor, was altogether a very ingen- 
ious piece of woman's theology." 

But, after all^ the veiled eyes stood in the way. Lec- 
turing Bureaux were afraid to put a blind lady's name 
on their list lest she might not draw — at least that is 
what one of them wrote to the friend who would fain 
pass all his engagements that season over to me. Still 
I persevered until, faced far West, a heavy snowstorm 
compelled me to leave a piece of my baggage security 
to Board for myself and companion, after which the 
persuasion came easily that lecturing had never been 
"cast up" as "an highway" to fortune for me, and 
accordingly I fell into the line of march again with 
the little books, my foreshadowed way, and, therefore, 
the way over which the promise of guidance Divine 
seems ever closest bent. 

♦ 4: « « 

To 
Mrs. E. A. Adams, 

San Francisco, Col, 



16g THE FORESHADOWED WAY. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

WAITING. 

San Francisco, Cal., June, 1885. 

Dear watcher upon the tower of my night, can you 
believe that like Boaz of old, Father Time has said once 
again to the reapers : "Let fall now a sheaf in the way 
of yonder gleaner whose head has whitened through 
forty years of waiting, waiting — a sheaf of prophecy 
merely, a little one foretelling the rich harvest that ere 
long she is to gather." All up and down this Pacific 
coast, or literally "on the side of the world toward me," 
not a vestige of "the dark green stuff" or the green- 
back currency is to be seen. In a bank to-day asking 
for a piece of it in exchange for silver : 

"We do not handle it, madam !" was the curt reply. 
Then it flashed upon me that from the Missouri to the 
Pacific hardly a scrap of it had been taken in return 
for the little books — everywhere gold, silver or the 
new silver certificate. 

When the darkness of the third scene had fallen in 
sable curtains down around my life, I read from it the 
sure following of all that had been panoramaed to my 
spirit eyes in those fleeting seconds ; and now when be- 
nignant Fate stands recording the aeons of waiting be- 
tween the coming and the disappearance of the "dark 
green stuff" so nearly passed, how easy to see that ere 
long the banks all over the land will be saying : 



WAITING. 169 

"We do not handle it, madam!" 

Does that look any more impossible to you now than 
looked the "golden specks" or tiny gold dollars the day 
of the vision, five years before they were thought of? 
Any more impossible than their sudden disappearance; 
any more impossible than the coming of the "dark green 
stuff" in their stead, that only our Civil War thrust 
upon the world ; any more impossible its disappearance 
than would have looked its issue a quarter of a cen- 
tury ago? The absence of the "dark green stuff" here 
on the side of the world where I chance to be, marks 
the approach of its utter disappearance so plainly that 
a handwriting upon the wall could scarcely make it 
plainer. 

No imagination, though, may be winged enough to 
foresee or in the least forestall the putting out of 
God's hand; yet somewhere within the confines of His 
eternal providence the two remaining scenes lie hidden. 
The experience that there has never seemed any name 
for but a vision was a veritable unfolding of the future 
to the eyes of my soul, while all consciousness of the 
outer world was held as in the abeyance of death. 
Whatever then was panoramaed to my gaze within the 
scope of its duration could have been trailed only by 
the hand of One who knoweth to still the senses of the 
body, while the soul, for a second free, overlooks the 
sombered ages of its own destiny, noting the while each 
varying scene, each shadowy footprint as landmarks to 
memory when in aftertime they come to be retraced 
in stern reality. How then eliminate any one scene 
and write over it Impossible, when eight that were trailed 
within the same scope have been adready translated into 
real life ? No, I will believe, I must believe that some- 
where or somehow before the sunset of my life has 



170 THE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

fallen too low I shall not only stand with those golden 

leaves or squares folded in my arms, but behold the 

dawn that overwhelmed my soul in the vision breaking 

again its beams upon these eyes of mine, so weary in 

their waiting and so heavy in their longing for the 

day. 

* * « « 

To 
Mrs. Mary Weld, 

Eockford, Illinois, 



AN AFTER-PIECE, 171 



CHAPTEK XXVI. 

AN AFTER-PIECE. 

Chicago, Ills., March, 1886. 

Listening to your favor of the 6th, I could think of 
nothing but an angel of prophecy standing with the 
balance of the past and the future in her hand, pro- 
pounding this solemn inquiry to me : 

"Are you going to wait for the last scene of your 
vision to cross your path before your precious book 
will see the light ? Certainly enough has been fulfilled 
to constitute it one of the most wonderful of all God's 
providential dealings with a human being. Do you 
know the facts alone would make it a missioner, as your 
church people call now all who have a mission to the 
world? Don't forget that it is to be called 'The Fore- 
shadowed Life' — that it is and nothing else/^ 

Only through the horoscope of love, dear, dear Mrs. 
Nott, could your sweet eyes have discerned in the silent 
slipping away of the "greenbacks" the certain end of 
one more scene in that strange foreshadowing I first 
recounted to you there by the Bay in that dear long, 
long ago. Since your experience with the good Doctor's 
"memoirs" I need not tell you that some leaves to a 
manuscript must needs be gold lined, else a publisher 
will be slow to entertain it, especially one so large as 
my "Foreshadowed Way" has grown to be; and it is 
not the closing scene that I wait for now before bring- 



172 THE FORESHADOWED WAT. 

ing it out, but the next to the last, the scene of the 
shining squares that you remember I had folded in 
my arms when I walked away from the dark old pres- 
ence, saying to myself: "Why, this is wealth!" But 
do not say: 

"I hope to live to read it, but I am afraid you will 
not let me." The years have been many, and it is not 
surprising that you should be sometimes in doubt as 
to whether your steps are falling without or within the 
veil; but, dear Mrs. Nott, if only for the sake of one 
who has so long turned to the little city of your house 
for love and light, do you hearken less to the angels 
when they call, turn your sweet face away, nor watch 
their white hands when they beckon; and above all, do 
not linger too long over those ancient papers, lest their 
dust choke the river between to a fording, and their be- 
loved author come to entice you away. 

Has the last one, then, of all those who were on the 
hill when you came to it in ^42, folded down his tent 
and gone? Five of my classmates at Lima entered the 
college that autumn, and if I coveted the "shew bread" 
they were to gather from its altars, I envied them not 
less the times they would meet the distinguished bride 
of the president, whose beauty and rare attainments 
had been extolled until, to the aspirant I then was, it 
seemed worth a journey to Schenectady if only once to 
look on her radiance, and in that one glance of con- 
trast gain answer to the query: "What lack I yet?" 

Heaven borrows oftenest of those who live nearest, 
and do I wonder that dear Mrs. Nott has come at last 
to find a feeling of loneliness creeping over her? No, 
no, I wonder not, but am pleased rather to hear her 
express it, to hear her complain a little — it makes her 
^em so more human, and ever so little more like me, 



AN AFTERPIECE. . 173 

with nothing left but the old home among the elms, 
whose windows had been gladdened by the light of 
seven weddings when the golden wedding came; since, 
the crepe of two funerals has sombered its doors, and 
the old place is standing empty and alone. 

The question as to the result of my long journey 
West brings me in part to bear witness against myself, 
so little was gained thereby. From New York to San 
Francisco with the little books, and not a corner even 
of that pretty mortgage of mine lifted, all the way one 
place so nearly consuming the other. And now to have 
the old fields over again I must needs have a new book; 
and of my two small ones I have chosen Mortara, a 
name your lips first pronounced to me, now almost 
forty years agone. 

That most benign of critics, Dr. J. G. Holland, said : 
"If you have other things that you can publish and 
leave Mortara until you are dead and gone, it would 
make a splendid after-piece." Although "gone," verily 
"gone," I am not "dead," and the little book is fast 
going into type. If not a missioner, as you say, it goes 
to fill a need; and who knows but the ninth scene of 
the msion lies folded within its leaves? Let it go 
forth then, even as it was lived, every line lengthened 
with the footprints of my wanderings, and every word 
pulsing with a heart-beat of mine own. 

:j! SJ! •»• * 

To 

Mrs. Dr. Nott, 

Union College, Schenectady, N. F, 



174 THE FORESHADOWED WAY. 






CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE NINTH SCENE. 

Greenshurg, Pa., October, 1900. 

Do humans gravitate to places as they do to one an- 
other? After thirty-eight years, without planning, 
without seeking, without a thought nearly, I find my- 
self again in Greensburg — might say the winds blew 
my barque this way. Arriving, I looked boarding- 
places until the sun threatened to leave the sky; then 
no alternative, must take to an hotel — one too awfully 
expensive, one little ^^eyes" did not like the entrance; 
only one left — came to it, terms acceptable, shown to 
my room, and found myself within five feet of the 
room I had here thirty-eight years ago — the little room 
wherein the discovery of the *^dark green stuff" of the 
vision was made — the seventh scene fulfilled, whereby 
I knew that God had neither forgotten nor forsaken, 
and the end with the light, the light would come yet. 

Not long after, I went to visit my friend, Mrs. Dr. 
Nott, at Schenectady, to whom I had told the vision 
at the Long Island Water Cure, in the summer of 1848, 
since when she had watched three scenes of it transpire 
or "come to pass," as she expressed it in her Bible way. 
You and I were in the library where hung the portrait 
of the fifty-year president of the college, and were 
noting the elevations on his venerable head, thereby 
accounting for the title the world had given him^ "the 



THE NINTH SCENE. 175 

old man eloquent/' when your grandmother entered, 
exclaiming : 

''Oh ! now you must tell Willie the story of that vision, 
one more scene of which has just been fulfilled by this 
greenback currency the war has brought about." Ah! 
how well I remember your cordial assent to the lend- 
ing of your ears, and I gauge therefrom your interest 
now while I rehearse to you the fulfillment of all that 
was foreshadowed. 

It was near the close of my last term at school, when 
one day a bell struck that called me to class; and giving 
the slate I had been using a little shove back on the 
table and seizing my book, I started to rise. There all 
consciousness ceased, while within the twinkling of three 
or five seconds a long sombered life was trailed before 
my spirit eyes. First, I stood looking on myself apart 
from myself and in snow white. Then right over be- 
yond, as it seemed, I saw myself in deep black, standing 
with a group of others also in black, sensed the great 
heat blazing down upon them, and noticed that water 
was near. Then as by a turn of thought I was con- 
scious of having become that other self in black, stand- 
ing alone, when suddenly thick darkness gathered upon 
the world. 

The phenomenon, vision or whatever it was, oc- 
curred in the summer of 1843, and in the summer of 
1845, just two years later, a moon rose upon the sky 
that was to watch those first three scenes change from 
shadow to the sternest reality. The scene in white 
proved to be my marriage by the death-bed of my be- 
trothed; the one in black his obsequies by the shore of 
Ontario, with a July sun blaziug down, and the Lake 
waters rolling up almost to the feet of the dead ; and 
then while I stood and mourned, and ere yet that fated 



l'J'6 TSE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

moon had fully waned, a night settled down around my 
life, whose blackness swallowed up the sun, the moon 
and the stars. 

I did not die; I did not pray to die, but lay there 
like one slain of great heart wounds, slain and yet alive. 
Days passed, long night-days, days so dark that only 
God had light to count them by. Then a morning came 
when slowly and very tentatively I began to feel my 
way out into the world; and before the first step was 
taken, the soul in me reeled and I settled back, groan- 
ing the great groan of soul that reaches heaven. Did 
I hear it, or does an utterance from out the unseen so 
fall upon our inner being as to touch all our senses 
and we call it feeling ? Say then I more felt than heard 
the whisper: "I will guide thee with mine eye.'^ Not 
knowing that I had ever heard or seen the words before, 
I seized upon their promise of an heavenly guidance 
as addressed expressly to me, and from Him who had 
not only foreshadowed my lot, but had set my feet to 
treading down its darkened way. Over and over I re- 
peated the words : " I will guide thee with mine eye," 
each repetition seeming to bring me nearer to the Divine 
and nearer to the smile that was to be as a lamp to my 
feet. Then with the gladness of great tears, one by one 
I lifted the precious words and bound them about my 
heart. Around and around I wound them, until braced 
and healed by them I stood up, and with bowed head 
making no murmur, faced toward the next scene — 
the being borne or carried along through the darkness, 
which materialized in my journey from Eochester to 
the New York Blind Institute for a lapse of three 
years — just long enough, you see, for writing the little 
book that was to be the "open sesame" to the remaining 
scenes of the vision, beginning with the one as impossi- 



TSE ninth SCENt!. 177 

ble to words as to lift shadows from water^ the scene 
wherein the darkness itself began to loom up before me 
with an overawing presence that, while it filled me with 
fear, drew me steadily nearer and nearer to it until I 
discovered its surface specked all over with tiny circles 
of gold. 

As I say, the little book was written, but the pub- 
lisher who would not undertake it without being first 
secured for half of the first edition or the sale of a 
thousand copies had a part to play in the fulfillment of 
that unimaginable scene by driving me to the necessity 
of seeking a thousand subscribers for the little book in 
the great, overawing city of N'ew York, just after the 
Government issue of gold dollars in 1849. In the vision, 
picking those golden specks out with one hand and drop- 
ping them into the other, when the palm was nearly 
full I discovered them to be money, and said to myself: 
"Ah ! I can make these do all that I should do for the 
dear ones in that cottage home, and'' — go and marry the 
tall doctor whom I loved, I was going to say; but in- 
stead my thought turned to pick out another of the 
little gold pieces, and when I went to drop it into the 
hand, lo ! all the others were gone as though what I 
had been thinking to do with them had spirited them 
away. Do you see? — I was going to say "marry the 
tall doctor," but I did not finish the words. He who 
was trailing the vision before my spirit eyes could read 
the future, and knew that when I should come to liter- 
ally pick those gold dollars out of the dark old world 
around me and use them for the dear ones, the tall 
doctor would be in his grave and I left to gather those 
tiny circles and watch them disappear from my hand 
almost faster than I could gather them, exactly as was 
foreshadowecL 



178 TEE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

What in the vision I could find no name for but 
moving on, or going, has materialized in over a half 
century of wanderings with the little books — wander- 
ings that if put in line would more than circumvent the 
globe. Indeed, between the two gulfs at the head and 
foot of the continent, as between the two oceans that 
border it, there is hardly a town large enough to have 
a mayor along whose ways my shadow has not fallen, 
while over it all has hung so closely bent the promise: 
"I will guide thee with mine eye," that never the jostle 
of a footfall nor the straying of a step. 

After fourteen years of the wanderings the war ban- 
ished the little gold dollars and introduced in their stead 
the "dark green stuff" that in yonder chamber, thirty- 
eight years ago, I discovered to be the seventh scene of 
the vision fulfilled. And now look at it, my friend — 
right on the eve of another scene, the ninth, I am here 
again. The greenback currency long since disappeared, 
the eighth scene ; the greenback itself is withdrawn to a 
flattened mound off at the left just as it was in the 
vision, while right over behind the place where the 
stack of the "dark green stuff" has been, is shining out 
the long line of "golden squares" standing on their edges 
in the form of gold certificates. What are they, think 
you, but the long, self-lengthening line of golden 
squares or leaves of the vision, up toward whose right- 
hand end a few grew loose and came out to me ? How 
few they seemed compared to the long line that re- 
mained! When that feature transpires, as it surely 
will, I shall turn directly away from the dark old pres- 
ence, and after a little say to myself in real life as I did 
in the foreshadowing one: 

"Why ! this is wealth. I can go now and have what- 
ever I wish." At that point in the vision for the first 



THE VIVTH SCEVE. 179 

time I heard voices, one seeming to dictate a little as to 
what I should do with the golden leaves or "squares" 
that had come to be mine. Then the hurrying down 
to a crossing on something that rocked under my feet, 
and the little farther on when I turned to look back 
and saw that the long, dark way had been all a climbing 
way. Then turning as if to go on, right from my feet 
spread out a sea of distance overhung by a sky of night. 
While I looked, above the horizon came a little break 
that I thought foaming waters, and as I watched them 
rolling toward me in eddies growing larger and larger, 
I thought of the knowingness in them, saw that they 
were coming straight to me ; but not until they broke 
over me in great waves did I realize that it was the 
light. 

That turning to look back is so like the retrospective 
many have reported at the approach of death, that per- 
adventure the closing scene of the vision lapsed itself 
to within the boundary of the unseen, and the day is no 
more to dawn for me here. It came, though, within the 
same scope of all the others. Besides, it does not seem 
possible that a soul freed from the body and drifting 
away to the "other side" could mistake the first touch 
of its dawn for foaming water, as you see I did the 
first break in the great dome of night. More still, the 
gladness of that moment was of too finite a conscious- 
ness to be realized upon any other than a material plane ; 
and now that the "greenback" is literally withdrawn 
and the long self-lengthening line of the "golden 
squares" shining out, I know that He whose hand has 
covered mine with its gentle guidance through nine of 
those ten foreshadowed scenes will neither fail to un- 
burden the life with the "squares" that grew loose 
and came out to me, nor forget to brighten its close with 



180 THE FORESHADOWED WAY. 

a break in these clouds, lest bearing away with me 
only memories of gloom, I somber even the steps of 
the angels sent to guide me away. 

The manner of its coming too was so like being re- 
stored to sight by treatment — first a little break, com- 
ing toward me in eddies as it did, now almost out of 
sight, and then larger and larger growing. Science 
holds in her hands many secrets, and one may be in 
reserve just for that closing scene of the vision. But 
be that break in the clouds on "this side" or on "the 
other," the joy of it to my long-imprisoned soul will 
be enough to ring a new chord upon every harp in 
heaven, if indeed the heavenly arches themselves do 
not ring with the gladness of my soul's cry: "Oh! 
the light, the light!" 

To the 
Eon. W. A. Potter, 

New York. 



I 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGK 

I. Six Scenes 11 

II. Voices from Afar 19 

III. The Wide, Free World 23 

IV. Somewhere or Somehow 29 

V. The First Day Out 35 

VI. " A Special Edict " 44 

VII. Never Doubt Again 50 

VIII. Only the Cicero 63 

IX. The Benediction op His Name 72 

X. Lighting New Lights 76 

XI. The Home op "Evangeline" 86 

XII. Queen op Song 91 

XIII. All Immortals 96 

Xrv. My Better Days 103 

XV. A Long Way Yet 107 

XVI. His Venerable Head 116 

XVII. An Absent Star 120 

XVIIL How So? 131 

XIX. In Some Far Time 138 

XX. A Break in the Clouds 143 

XXL Cast upon the Waters 145 

XXIL All These Years 150 

XXIII. The Seventh Scene 155 

XXIV. Glimpses of the End 163 

XXV. Waiting 168 

XXVI. An After-piece 171 

XXVIL The Ninth Scene 174 

(181) 



AH communications for the author may 
be addressed : Mrs. Helen A. De Kroyft, 
Aldrich Place, Dansville, N. Y. 



082) 



OCT 8 1901 



r. /Va4- 



QQWOl 



